<p><pre><code>  &gt; Intuitively Lisp might be a secret weapon for startups, but not for open source 
  &gt; where the communities of the mainstream choices are more productive, simply because
  &gt; of popularity
</code></pre>
Open source is not a popularity contest.  In fact, open source, and specially free and libre software, is a great place for leftfield technologies to flourish.  In fact, Lisp had a place in free software before Github even existed, with various flavours being the scripting language of choice in popular projects like Emacs, Gimp or Gnome.<p>It is rather in the proprietary corporate world where there is often resistance to adopt languages outside of the mainstream.   The more supply of developers for a technology is available, the lower cost of labour.  It&#x27;s hard for the merits of a technology to argue against this fact in the face of management.