Kent M. Pitman (KMP) is a programmer who has been involved for many years in the design, implementation, and use of systems based on the programming languages Lisp and Scheme.
[1] Since 2010[update], he has been President of HyperMeta, Inc.[2] Pitman was chair of the ad hoc group (part of X3J13) that designed the Common Lisp Error and Condition System and is author of the proposal document that was ultimately adopted,[3] and many papers on Lisp programming and computer programming in general.
While in high school, he saw output from one of the guess the animal pseudo-artificial intelligence (AI) games then popular.
He prepared the document that became ANSI Common Lisp, the Common Lisp HyperSpec (a hypertext conversion of the standard),[5] and the document that became International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ISLISP.
In some posts there, he has expressed his opinion on open-source software, including open source implementations of Lisp and Scheme, as something that should be judged individually on its essential merits, rather than automatically considered good merely by being free or open.