[reikonomusha]

For such a small team developing SBCL, it has been hugely stable, consistent, and advancing for years. SBCL has many ways it could improve, but it definitely exceeds most bars of quality for serious—even commercial—projects.

[tmountain]

These kind of projects always impress me. Is it commercially backed or just a labor of love for the maintainers?

[reikonomusha]

It's a mix of volunteer work, contract work, and contributions from paid employees. Google historically has been a big contributor since they use SBCL for Google Flights.

[mepian]

Wasn't ITA Software using CCL before their acquisition by Google? I wonder why they switched to SBCL. Right now CCL seems to be rather understaffed but this wasn't the case when they switched, as far as I know.

[ratzkewatzke]

Back in 2009, before the acquisition, a developer ITA software presented at the SBCL workshop (audio here: http://www.sbcl.org/sbcl10/materials/cracauer-talk.ogg), talking about the company's use of SBCL. They'd also talked about using CCL; the last I heard was that they used one on desktops, the other in prod deployments.

[eep_social]

CCL was primarily used for another project, and the decision to do so was dramatic and made many people unhappy. This thread has some juicy details from the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911163