Greetings! Good to hear so much interest in the future of maxima!
I think the proposal below is great! Here is some more info:
1) I think I started this thread a few weeks ago, and have since been
away from my mail. Early on, someone indicated that RMS had called
for new maintainers of gcl and maxima. I wrote him to see if he
had any replies. He said he had not, and asked if I was
interested. I replied that I was, but did not feel that I was the
best qualified, and asked for some time to discuss on this list to
see if someone else wanted to step forward. I told him that if
there was no one, I would do what I could rather than see the
project languish.
2) We need to get back to him with the name of the official GNU
maintainer. James or Richard, if either of you are so willing,
please say so and I'll pass you name on to RMS. Of the three roles
James outlined, the 'project coordinator' should probably be the
official GNU maintainer. If either of you are unwilling for any
reason, then I will volunteer with RMS, unless someone else steps
forward in the next few days.
3) If you need me in any capacity, I'm willing to help, but most
likely have less available time and applicable experience than
several others on this list. Here is the experience I can offer:
a) skills in math at the level of a Ph.D. in theoretical
physics
b) maintained the Debian maxima package for about 1.5
years,
c) pretty good with C/gdb/assembly,
d) have a reasonable amount of experience porting and
packaging for Debian
e) had worked briefly with Dr. Schelter on fixing segfaults
and getting stripped dynamic binaries
f) registered at sourceforge, could setup the project
there if current site or a new one is desired.
g) little lisp experience
h) little time
4) Here is the list of those who have expressed interest in
helping with maxima. In addition to those who have posted to the
list (and have been previously compiled by Cliff, thanks!), a few
have contacted me via private email.
James Amundson amundson@fnal.gov
Richard Fateman fateman@cs.berkeley.edu
Raymond Toy toy@rtp.ericsson.se
Jay Belanger belanger@truman.edu
Tuukka Toivonen tuukkat@ees2.oulu.fi
Pedro Fortuny P.Fortuny@qmw.ac.uk
Lizardo Nunes lizardo@urbi.com.br
David Holmgren DavidHolmgren@smarttech.com
Vadim V. Zhytnikov vvzhy@mail.ru
Boris Veytsman borisv@lk.net
Jay Belanger belanger@truman.edu
Paulo Ney de Souza desouza@math.berkeley.edu
Cliff Yapp smustudent1@yahoo.com
Gosse Michel michel.gosse@freesbee.fr
Kevin Cosgrove kevinc@dOink.COM
Robert Alan Byer byer@mail.ourservers.net
Paolo Nason Paolo.Nason@mib.infn.it
Detlev Zundel detlev.zundel@stud.uni-karlsruhe.de
Camm Maguire camm@enhanced.com
Suggestions:
1) We should separate the list into a user's list and a developer's
list. Whoever serves as project coordinator should contact the
people listed above and get their permission to subscribe them to
the developer's list. The lists can be setup at sourceforge.
2) Is anyone interested in working on gcl? I am happy to offer what
help I can here as well, especially as it appears that maxima will
work best with gcl for at least the near future. A person familiar
with the common lisp standard would be extremely helpful :-)
3) Personally, I think it very important that maxima remain fully
functional in the absence of commercial, closed or proprietary
systems. Not that these systems could not be used when available,
of course. There are many symbolic math systems available in the
proprietary world, but to my understanding maxima is the best and
perhaps only one available for the education and empowerment of the
public at large. So perhaps we should put in place some system
that makes sure new development works with the freely-available
tools.
James Amundson <amundson@fnal.gov> writes:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to make several proposals for the Maxima project:
>
> 1) We have (a) a project coordinator, (b) a content referee and (c) an
> infrastructure referee. The referees would have final say on what goes
> into CVS, but would not necessarily be the ones doing the work.
>
> 2) I volunteer to be project coordinator and infrastructure referee. I
> am actually doing infrastructure work right now and intend to continue
> to do so. My real interests lie in the content, but I think the current
> infrastructure needs to be improved to the point where it no longer gets
> in the way of the content.
>
> 3) I nominate Richard Fateman to be content referee.
>
> 4) The the next steps in the Maxima project should be as follows:
>
> a) Maxima CVS moves to sourceforge.
>
> b) Call the current version Maxima 5.6 Beta. Incorporate whatever
> hacks/bug fixes people have been sending to the mailing list since
> Schelter passed away. Disallow new features.
>
> c) There is no 5.6 Final release.
>
> d) Incorporate new build system when I am done with it. Clean up
> package. Call the new version Maxima 5.9. The purpose of this release is
> to act as a beta release for the first major release of the new Maxima
> project, 6.0. Focus for 5.9 should be the shift to parity among ANSI
> Common Lisp implementations.
>
> e) Bang on bug fixes in Maxima 5.9 series. Add new tests. Continue to
> disallow new features. Add new Maxima documentation.
>
> f) Release Maxima 6.0 when we are satisfied that it is clean and stable.
>
> g) Create Maxima 6.1 branch for new features. Keep stable 6.0 branch
> with bug fixes only.
>
> h) Attempt to get better publicity for Maxima when it reaches 6.0.
>
> --Jim
>
> _______________________________________________
> Maxima mailing list
> Maxima@www.math.utexas.edu
> http://www.math.utexas.edu/mailman/listinfo/maxima
>
>
--
Camm Maguire camm@enhanced.com
==========================================================================
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah