Steel Bank Common Lisp

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SBCL

Author:	Forked from CMUCL
Developer:	Various
Initial release:	December 1999 (fork)
Latest release:	1.0.2 / January 2007
OS:	several POSIX-compliant OSs; Microsoft Windows
Platform:	Cross-platform
Available language(s):	Common Lisp
Use:	Compiler and runtime
License:	Public Domain, with parts covered by the MIT License and BSD License (sans advertising clause)
Website:	www.sbcl.org

Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is a Free implementation of Common Lisp. It began as a fork from Carnegie Mellon University Common Lisp and shares much code with that implementation. The rationale for the fork was to clean up the codebase in the interest of bootstrapability and easier maintenance (the mainstream CMUCL development aims instead to enhance the existing codebase, without undertaking such a major clean-up). The developers hope that the project will result in a fully standard-conforming Common Lisp implementation with the high performance characteristic of CMUCL, which is easy to extend and test, and that can be ported easily between platforms.

The name "Steel Bank Common Lisp" is a pun on the name of its parent project. Andrew Carnegie made his fortune in the steel industry and Andrew Mellon was a successful banker.

SBCL currently undergoes more active development and more frequent releases than CMUCL.