Franz Lisp

In computer programming, Franz Lisp was a Lisp system written at UC Berkeley by the students of Professor Richard J. Fateman, based largely on Maclisp and distributed with the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) for the Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) VAX. Piggybacking on the popularity of the BSD package, Franz Lisp was probably the most widely distributed and used Lisp system of the 1970s and 1980s.

The name is a pun on composer Franz Liszt.

It was written specifically to be a host for running the Macsyma computer algebra system on VAX. The project was started at the end of 1978 shortly after UC Berkeley took delivery of their first VAX 11/780 (named Ernie CoVax, the first of many systems with pun names at UCB). Franz Lisp was available free of charge to educational sites, and was also distributed on Eunice, a Berkeley UNIX emulator that ran on VAX/VMS.

At the time of Franz Lisp's creation, the Macsyma computer algebra system ran principally on a DEC PDP-10. This computer's limited address space caused difficulties. Attempted remedies included ports of Maclisp to Multics or Lisp Machines, but even if successful these would only be solutions for MIT as these machines were expensive and not commonly available. Franz Lisp was the first example of a framework where large Lisp programs could be run outside the Lisp Machine environment—at the time, Macsyma was considered a very large program. After being ported to Franz Lisp, Macsyma was distributed to about 50 sites under a license restricted by MIT's interest in making Macsyma proprietary. The VAX Macsyma that ran on Franz Lisp was called Vaxima. When Symbolics Inc. bought the commercial rights to Macsyma from MIT to sell along with its Lisp Machines, it eventually was compelled to sell Macsyma also on DEC VAX and Sun Microsystems computers, paying royalties to the University of California for the use of Franz Lisp.

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