You guys are talking past each other. One of you is talking about a standard in the true sense (such as an ANSI Standard, which Lisp has in spades) and one of

You guys are talking past each other. One of you is talking about a standard in the true sense (such as an ANSI Standard, which Lisp has in spades) and one of you is talking about a canonical/standardIZED IMPLEMENTATION (which Lisp doesn't technically have.) So, everyone can follow the actual ANSI Standard for CL. And if you're looking for a standardized open-source implementation, you should just choose SBCL ;-) Either way, you should be Lisping instead of arguing.