NEWS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Contacts:	Celia Wolf			Richard Billington
		Member				President
		Lisp Industry Council		Association of Lisp Users
		Gold Hill, Inc.			Georgia Institute of Technology
		[...]				[...]



COMMON LISP VENDORS AND USERS UNITE TO PROMOTE LISP
Association Supports New Common Lisp Standard

January 1, 1992 -- The attendees of the first international Lisp Users
and Vendors Conference (LUV-91) voted to form the Association of Lisp
Users (ALU).  At the same conference, the major Common Lisp vendors
formed the Lisp Industry Council (LIC).  The ALU and the Lisp Industry
Council will promote the use of Lisp for commercial, research, and
academic applications.

"The formation of these two organizations signals a maturation of the
Lisp market," said Celia Wolf, a representative of the Lisp Industry
Council.  "Both vendors and users realize that cooperation among
diverse organizations is essential to the continued growth of the Lisp
community.  Together, we will promote the benefits of Lisp as a
powerful and cost-effective language for high-level programming."

The Lisp Industry Council includes members of the following
organizations: Apple Computer, College Park Software, Franz Inc., Gold
Hill, Inc., Harlequin Ltd., Ibuki Inc., Lucid, Inc., Symbolics, Inc.,
and Venue Inc.  The organization will manage joint public relations
activities, promote the standardization process, and assist in
organizing future Lisp conferences.  The next Lisp User and Vendor
(LUV-92) conference will be held in San Diego, CA, August 10-14, 1992.

Both the ALU and the Lisp Industry Council will work to build ties to
international Lisp organizations such as JEIDA (Japanese Electronic
Industry Development Association), which sponsored the recent Japanese
Practical Applications of Lisp (JPAL) conference, and EuroPAL
(European Practical Applications of Lisp), an association of European
Lisp users which produces a quarterly newsletter and technical
seminars.

Jim Aragones, ALU Board Vice President said, "This organization
demonstrates the continued vibrancy of the Lisp community.  Just as
Usenix provides a user forum for Unix, the ALU does the same thing for
Lisp."  The ALU represents a broad-based user community in line with
the current diversity of the Lisp market.  The group provides users
with a forum for sharing experiences, a clearinghouse of product and
application information, and the ability to drive vendor priorities
and standards.  While many members of the ALU are users of Common
Lisp, the organization is open to users of all dialects of Lisp.
Special interest groups will be formed to meet the needs of specific
dialect users, such as Scheme.

The software development community is becoming more enlightened about
the ability of Lisp to facilitate program development and maintenance.
Lisp is used for such successful commercial applications as AutoCAD
and Interleaf publishing software.  Both products feature powerful
extension languages based on Lisp, known respectively as AutoLisp and
Interleaf Lisp.  Fortune 500 companies continue to invest heavily in
commercial applications ranging from credit approval and airport
scheduling to logistics management for the U.S. Army.  In one case,
the system saves $2 per credit check; in another, the system ensured
that the Desert Storm action had sufficient resources.  In addition,
several major universities have recently adopted Common Lisp and
Scheme into their curriculum for introductory computer science
courses.

ANSI is expected to begin finalization of the Common Lisp standard in
1992. Most memmbers of the ALU and Lisp Industry Council fully support
the new standard, which will permit increased interoperability and
portability for Lisp applications.  Lisp has a long history of
successfully adopting new programming paradigms as they emerge from
computer language research centers.  The ALU and the Lisp Industry
Council will continue to promote the incorporation of new programming
technology into Lisp so that it is available for cutting edge
commercial applications.

Both organizations will release specific plans and programs over the
next few months.

Additional Contacts for further information:


Jim Aragones
LUV '92 Conference Chairman
ALU Board Vice President
GE Corporate R&D 
[...]

Peter Van Sickel
ALU Board Secretary
Alcoa Technical Center
[...]

Masayuki Ida
ALU Board Member
Vice President, Symbolics Lisp User Group - Japan
Aoyama Gakuin University, JAPAN
[...]