[yellow_and_gray]

> Community is the single most important factor in whether or not a technology will succeed in the longer term or not.

I'm not so sure. I wouldn't make that statement about Java for example. Technologies that succeed in the longer term have some merit to them. If it was just about community, Lisp would have ceased to exist, and yet you typed your comment in a web app written in a Lisp.

Plan 9 is the Lisp of operating systems. Why does my gut say Plan9-as-a-service is an undervalued startup idea?

[jacquesm]

The community around Java is mindbogglingly large. That community was bought-and-paid for rather than grown organically but there are more ways than one to skin a cat.

The lisp eco-system is more like a collection of communities of very small (individuals?) sub-communities.

What technology underpins the web-app here has very little to do with the success of the community interacting here, though for sure there are many more lisp capable programmers here than on most other programmer hang-outs (lambda the ultimate excepted).