[kazinator]

Although you can fix a bug in GCC and submit it to the project (been there done that) you cannot deploy a gcc change as part of a C program.

Then again, you can't really deploy a Linux bug fix as part of a Linux program either, so the whole linux-windows-lisp-others analogy is tenuous.

The analogy holds in the sense that in Lisp we have less of a barrier between the programmer and the language, and in free software we have less of a barrier between users and the software. But the barriers are different.

And, ironically, the barrier which is out of your way in Lisp is still out of your way if the Lisp is a closed-source, proprietary Lisp. That is to say, doing many things in the Lispy way does not require you to rebuild the implementation from source, or to have the source.

[lispm]

Proprietary Lisps don't need to be totally closed source. For example Allegro CL provides much of the source code. mocl provides a source code license. LispWorks otoh is mostly closed source - minus parts of the editor.