newLISP is free and open-source software released under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later.

In April 1999, newLISP was ported to Linux; some of its core algorithms were rewritten, and all Windows-specific code removed.

newLISP was released as an open-source software project licensed under the GPL, and development on Windows stopped after version 6.0.25.

[4] newLISP attempts to provide a fast, powerful, cross-platform, full-featured scripting version of the language Lisp while using only a modest system resources such as data storage (e.g., disk space) and memory.

newLISP runs on the operating systems Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), Linux, macOS, Solaris, and Windows.

newLISP supports namespaces termed contexts, which can be assigned to variables and passed to functions, but which are associated with globally unique symbols, limiting their use as first-class citizens (objects).

A newLISP-GS based development environment is included in newLISP binary distributions, and GTK-server, OpenGL, and Tcl/Tk-based programming interfaces are available.

Any newLISP version allows building executable files, portable applications, for deployment which are self-contained and need no installing.