Lisp Machine operating system with complete source code leaked

Well, even SBCL depends pretty heavily on a non-Common Lisp Emacs to be useful, and therefore lacks a powerful well-integrated editor substrate to build on. Debuggers are not as good as Genera's. There is no good integrated solution to Lisp version control, packaging, and patch delivery. I think McCLIM is still a work very much in progress. I don't think anything matches the ability of Genera to be totally aware of every piece of code in the machine. I'm not sure, but I think Genera stream support is much more integrated with networking.

And my keyboards don't have both left and right Super and Hyper keys!

They're running on windows and unix...

[Waiting to get modded into oblivion]

Anyway, see the whole Rob Pike presentation on systems research:

http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf

Check out the only comment from dkschmidt. It shows good form on his part to just point people in the right direction instead of getting his panties in a bunch.

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3769989/Symbolics_Open_Genera_2.0_for_Alpha_-_complete_package_with_Lisp

Already mentioned further down in the comments here. Cool, regardless.

mrbill says:

There were people working behind the scenes trying to get the Symbolics VLM stuff legitimately released in some way to the hobbyist community - and this is likely to throw a wrench into that effort.

For how long? Maybe a move like this is exactly what was needed to get it going (growing community). This VLM for linux sounds very interresting.

At least the past couple of years - the last public mention of that I saw said "we're working on something for summer 2006".

As far as I know, it was legal and intellectual-property issues, not lack-of-coders.

From http://www.unlambda.com/cadr/cadr_faq.html:

"Symbolics today is owned by one person and is really just a maintaince group for old lisp machines. The sole owner recently passed away and all of the software is now in probate. A group of ex-symbolics people are working to free the software and get it released. We're hoping for something in the summer of 2006."

it was legal and intellectual-property issues,

Ah yes, Symbolics, the company that was so badly managed that it succeeded in taking Lisp down with it. The Symbolics/Genera story is one of software second-to-none, with ridiculous troglodyte management and obsession with 'intellectual property', in the purely dog-in-a-manger sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#The_collapse_of_the_Lisp_machine_market_in_1987

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics#Endgame

H.P. Newquist's book "The Brain Makers" is a good overview and history of Symbolics, LMI, and the "AI Market" in the early 80s:

http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Makers-HP-Newquist/dp/0672304120

lemonodored?

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-menuext&ie=UTF-8&q=lemonodored

Fun fact: your comment is only 3 hours old and is already the number one link on Google for 'lemonodored'.

reddit has mighty googlejuice.

hrrhrr trusted individuals, behind the scenes. what a disgusting attitude.

The more exposure I have to MIT, the farther I want to be away from the culture that has evolved there. The stench is overpowering.

Agreed about MIT.

However, the secrecy is understandable given that Symbolics once had notoriously sharp teeth (and even now could conceivably go RIAA on us.)

Now all I need is an alpha...

This project will let you do similar things on x86 hardware:

http://labs.aezenix.com/lispm/index.php?title=VLM_On_Linux

And of course, these is always the world's most ubiquitous lisp machine, EMACS.

Were you able to get Linux VLM to work? It simply hangs on my machine, and under VMWare.

I got hung up on having to set my clock before year 2000. However, I hear that SDF has a public access alpha system with OpenGenera working though:

http://lemonodor.com/archives/000775.html

I use sdf and have no access to lisp. I think ISLISP is available to MetaARPA users, which costs $36 p.a.

By running sudo ./genera -w Genera-8-5.vlod I've gotten somewhere... no login yet though.

The cold boot stuff is calling PARSE-UNIVERAL-TIME which is a very hairy function (see io1/timpar.lisp). The constant *TEST-CASES* has examples of the formats that it will accept. My favorites:

;; Leave these last in case server is down!
"my birthday" "the day before my birthday"
"1 hour before dlw's birthday"
"ED@MIT-MC's birthday"

I will now curse you heathens who got OpenGenera from this torrent. Some of us had to search on IRC for years (even with an educational discount paying the $1000 just to futz around occasionally with OpenGenera is painful)! I even got banned from #lisp in my quest ...

Returning to the topic at hand, a natural date like "April 1 1990" should suffice. I've had the OG ISO for a while, and I still can't get it to do more than cold boot with the x86-64 VLM (it dies with an arithmetic error when trying to set the calendar time).

Ah, I have changed my system time in Linux just in case, but I'm only confused about the date & time format in genera. Google isn't giving me much on this one.

People are throwing them away every day. Just ask around.

Hey, HEEEEEY, does anyone have a spare Alpha system that has no use anymore for you? If so, send it to me, please.

And you'd still need Tru64.

$100 legit, if I recall (or bittorrent, if you dare, or the HD of that used Alpha you bought.)

Tru enough (ok, so I'm going to Hell)

The idea of buying an Alpha running Tru64 instead of GNU/Linux dropped from my mind into a deep dark hole.

That may work. I've had people tell me, 'If you don't take one of these out of my car, I'm leaving all 10 of them on the curb.'

Someone hook this brutha up

ebay?

I guess I could do that.

Seems like D. K. Schmidt, possibly the last man aboard the Symbolics ship, commented on the torrent!

Now that is amusing. Might as well turn it into a sales opportunity! DKS deserves all the profit he can make - I think it's pretty much a one-man operation now.

I wonder if any progress has been made with regards to the rights to everything being tied up in probate since Topping's death?

Agreed... bought a 36xx machine from him a few years ago. Nice guy and very pleasant to deal with. He even remembered me when he was going to be driving through my town and offered me a complete set of Genera manuals for my machine (at a very reasonable price).

I laughed out loud when I read his quote. What a salesman!

I don't like seeing stuff that is all ((x (x)) x), or worse, (((x) x) x) it's unsettling. It always makes me breathe easier to see something that works out more like (x (x (x))).

It's bad luck to make jokes about parens.

unless they have gnomes in them

So what the hell is this?

Oh, man. Where can I start?

It is:

1. important piece of history,
2. indicator of what future looks alike,
3. work of great talents.

I don't intend to use that code any way. I just want to look and learn and satisfy my curiosity.

Kind of an anticlimax. To a modern Lisp programmer, much of the Genera code is pretty ugly and old-fashioned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics

"Symbolics.com, owned by the aforementioned corporation is largely regarded as the first registered domain of the modern internet."
That's actually pretty cool.

Has anyone figured out how Tru64 licensing works? What I've found so far:

(1) a Base'' license is included with each Alpha system, but if you have a used Alpha that's become dissociated from itsBase'' license, HP wants you to buy another. (2) Licenses have model numbers like QL-MT4AE-67 that are specific to the model of Alpha on which it's running. (3) you have to buy extra licenses for all sorts of garbage, like having an unlimited number of users logged in, having more than one CPU, or functioning as a server.'' It sounds like a real load of garbage. (4) Thedeveloper and enthusiast'' noncommercial license is gone.

Here is what I don't know: (1) what are the licenses? CD-ROM's? numbers? forms that you FAX to HP and then are turned into numbers? fancy-looking sheets of paper that provide legal proof of license but have nothing to do with operating the machine? (2) what license is appropriate for my XP1000, where do I get it, and how much does it cost? It is all this have a salesman contact you'' brain damage, so they can quote a different price to each customer, but in my experience the price they'll quote to me ishahaha we won't bother to return your calls because I won't get enough commission from you to justify my time.'' I don't know if it's even possible, in reality, to buy a single license without being extremely pushy and having insider knowledge. (3) are licenses specific to the version of Tru64, or can I use any media kit with any license?

http://h21007.www2.hp.com/portal/site/dspp/menuitem.863c3e4cbcdc3f3515b49c108973a801/?ciid=2508713ba4f02110713ba4f02110275d6e10RCRD

I've used Alphas since 1999, but always used NetBSD on them. Now that I see what Tru64 is like, thank god I never had to deal with it before.

If you're going to run pirated Genera, why not leech Tru64 and its serial? Do you have more love for HP than for Symbolics?

I guess those are two separate questions. Why not? why not indeed---but I'm not sure how to leech it, since I don't understand how Tru64 licenses work hence the question! Do you have an answer, or are you just being contrary?

To review, I don't even know what the so-called licenses are. Are you saying you've seen them, and that Tru64 licenses are simply serial numbers? What does the serial number have to match, the model of your alpha? the version of Tru64? the serial number of the Alpha? nothing at all? "Why not" doesn't get the job done.

Do I have more love for HP than Symbolics? Maybe. HP is mostly just thoroughly mediocre, while Symbolics's almost unfathomable arrogance killed an entire platform and wasted generations of minds. Their attitude was more than our culture can afford, and I feel very strongly that they should not be praised for it just because the quality of their work was by some metrics exceptional.

I feel about the same way about Symbolics as Linux zealots feel when some technomidget says "oh computer geek huh. Are you gonna be the next Bill Gates? Whatever else you say about him, you have to respect him, because he's the richest man in the world." in other words, sickened and offended.

Good points, regarding Symbolics.

The licenses do appear to be simply serial numbers, not linked to a particular machine. They match the version of Tru64 you have. More specifically, a license key randomly pulled off eMule seems to work with an aging Alphastation I found.

OpenGenera and hot babe linkage on one page; I'm all in a tizzy.

And the girls live right in my area! Amazing!

No kidding; you must be from where I am.

I've never understood why libraries/software name themselves "open" when they, you know... aren't. Like, you know, OpenGL.

Off on a tangent: What's not open about OpenGL? It's a public API specification. You are free to implement it if you please.

Actually getting your implementation certified is or was another matter, if I recall correctly.

That's a completely different issue. It's completely free to implement OpenGL (I don't know if the full spec is free though), having your implementation certified to be able to use the OpenGL™ trademark isn't because , well, it's SGI's trademark and an important name.

OOOOhhh. I'd always considered it to be like open source. That makes a lot more sense, actually.

The specs are open but the name "OpenGL" is trademarked so you can't claim to have an OpenGL implementation unless you have a license from sgi.

This was done to keep buggy low quality implementations tarnishing the OpenGL name.

http://www.sgi.com/products/software/opengl/license.html

"Open" as in, say, OpenVMS once meant that the system could inter-operate with products from other sources - a break from the tradition of each computing vendor's wares being a self-contained universe.

If you don't know what it is, you almost certainly don't want it. Otherwise, your dreams have come true.

How true!

http://programming.reddit.com/info/2emke/comments/c2en3f

Laugh... I passed over the comments and somehow I didn't notice someone else had pointed it out already. Doh!

Well, it's worth repeating. ;)

If you don't know what it is, you almost certainly don't want it. Otherwise, your dreams have come true.

Pretty much sums it up..

Sweet!!
This is indeed awesome news!

Mmmmm... delicious delectable bit torrent.

Any emulator to run it on?