Thoughts on the simplification of CLISP

[<don...@is...>]

I have nothing against improving portability, but I was a little 
surprised not to hear some disagreement on this point:

 > 2.  It seems like development and support of CLISP is beginning to
 > dwindle.  If CLISP doesn't become Type 2, it'll quickly die as soon
 > as updates to it cease - due to rapid bit rot.

History suggests otherwise, in that development was essentially 
non-existent for several years.  If anything it has picked up in
the last few years.  Of course there's also room for disagreement
on what "quickly" means, and I get the impression that some people
view clisp (and maybe even lisp) as long dead already.
My view is that clisp is in no danger as long as we have virtual 
machines that can run old OS versions, which I now expect to be
as long as there are computers.
BTW I have plenty of code even older than clisp that still runs
inside clisp (using compatibility layers to interpret older lisp
dialects) and I fully expect that code to continue to be used into
the distant future.