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>>48
The Lisp situation was somewhat different. Before Common Lisp there were quite a few Lisp dialects that could be considered major: while they didn't behave identically, this wasn't a matter of not conforming to the standard since they didn't claim to be the same language—there was no standard they should have been conforming to. It was similar to the Python or Perl situation today, or to Clojure.
When the Common Lisp standard was created, vendors modified their Lisps into Common Lisps. There was definitely a period of non-compliance, but I would say that it was due to the fact that it takes time to make changes, not to disinterest in meeting the spec. It made no sense for vendor or customer to wait for every piece of CL to be in place before releasing, which would have meant languishing legacy dialects and a long wait for any significant upgrades or fixes that would come with the CL. Dialects with the manpower to do so met the standard long ago, and smaller ones when they could.