Franz has released ACL 7.0
A few of the many dozens of significant new features, minor enhancements and fixes include CLTL2-style environments support, a new regex module, Allegro prolog, a new Oracle interface, XML DOM support, HMAC, RC4, and SHA1, an ACL-specific module for SWIG (to generate FFIs), dbm support, gzip streams, a new OpenGL interface, #!-style fasl scripts and WSDL generation.
For a more complete overview of the changes, see the Franz site or Bill Clementson's post. For a detailed discussion, see Franz's release notes.
It's apparent a lot of work went into version 7.0 of ACL. Oracle, XML, SOAP--these things are modern, problem solving facilities that make it easier to plug Lisp into the rest of the world and make it more likely that Lisp will remain of this world. ACL can be expensive, but you can't deny that those Franz developers are busy.
P.S. Bill Clementson still gets my vote for overall best Lisp weblogger.
Posted by jjwiseman at October 27, 2004 01:29 PMDid they fix the bug where the price is so exorbitant no mere mortal can afford it?
Posted by: Ash on October 27, 2004 02:47 PMIMO, Franz is doing the right thing here. They have to price their lisp high enough to pay the bills, and they have to do enough to the lisp to justify that price point over the ever-improving free lisps. Adding lots of extra stuff on top does that, and also potentially enlarges the market.
The price of an ACL license is not so high compared to the salary of a (US) programmer using it. Maybe you should think of it as disincentive to offshore the programming jobs? :)
Posted by: Paul Dietz on October 27, 2004 03:15 PMyup, Bill Clementson is the best blogger outthere.
Posted by: sergio on October 28, 2004 12:36 AMHow much actually is it?
When I asked about ACL pricing a couple of years ago there were three different runtime pricing models. The first is for a single application that has just a single user - I didn't hear the pricetag, only that it varies depending on your operating system and on what features you use. The second was for a single server installation with multiple users - for unlimited users it was $24000 per installation. The final option was to give them a percentage of your revenue - from 3-15% depending on what minimum you guarantee. Of course you can haggle with them if you're so inclined.
I believe there is also a per-developer fee but I don't know what that is.
Posted by: Luke Gorrie on October 28, 2004 07:51 AMFrom http://www.franz.com/products/packages/ it seems pricing for ACL starts at $599USD. That's a great deal cheaper than their previous "lone developer" tier pricing....
Posted by: gavin on October 28, 2004 08:08 AMI think the page should make it clear that for $599 you are not getting a runtime license. You can write programs for $599 but if you want to let someone run them you have to pay more.
Posted by: Luke Gorrie on October 28, 2004 09:03 AMThe small print on that page says this about the $599 offer -
"Professional Edition, Academic Lease Pricing. Windows/Linux/Mac Platforms only. Lease option not available in all countries."
If that gets me ACL without a heap size limit, I would be interested. I don't care about distributing binaries. But it's not clear that it does.
I'm going to ask them.
The Professional Edition has no heap limit.
The only Allegro version that has ever had a heap limit is the Trial Edition.
Posted by: Kevin Layer on October 29, 2004 10:45 AM