Ian Eslick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Proposal:
>      1) Pull together a repository of common lisp
> utilities under an MIT or BSD style license (no
> restrictions) to try to enable the world of
> asdf-installable packages to come to depend on a single
> common library and so that newcomers will have a body of
> existing code they can exploit to save time and effort.

As a corrolary to this, what about doing something with all
the great code samples that get posted to comp.lang.lisp
every day?  I admit c.l.l. can be a scary place sometimes,
especially for newcomers, but there are some smart people
there who whip up all kinds of useful little utilities, if
only to prove how smart they are.  It's unfortunate that so
much of this gets lost in the archives, never to be seen
again.

So how about this: Someone (I volunteer to start) watch
comp.lang.lisp for interesting and useful bits of code,
label and categorize them, and store them at some central
location where they can be found again.  cl-user.net would
probably be a good place.  Even better, wrap each utility up
in a package with a descriptive name and make it
ASDF-installable.  That would require a place to host lots
of little tarballs, maybe common-lisp.net or even
lispniks.com.

When possible, one could contact authors while their posts
posts are still fresh in their minds and ask for permission.
But often several authors contribute to the same piece of
code.  In general, I think it's safe to assume that anything
posted to Usenet is public domain.  If anyone complains
about something we re-post, just take it down.

Think of it as picking flowers in the Lisp Garden.  Gotta
love these metaphors.  :)

-Stuart


--
stuartsierra.com - home of Digital Digressions, a sometimes lispy blog
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