On Sun, 2001-10-28 at 11:31, Camm Maguire wrote:
> 2) We need to get back to him with the name of the official GNU
> maintainer.
I was planning to contact RMS to tell him that I will become the new
maintainer, but I thought I'd wait a couple of days in order to let
people have a shot at disagreeing with my proposal in serious way.
I also need to contact the current owner of the Maxima sourceforge
project and the sysadmin at Texas.
> 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.
There's plenty for you to do...
> Here is the experience I can offer:
>
> a) skills in math at the level of a Ph.D. in theoretical
> physics
(off topic) Did you do your thesis work on heavy ion physics? I worked
in that field when I was an undergrad.
> b) maintained the Debian maxima package for about 1.5
> years,
I would definitely like to discuss packages issues with you. I know a
lot about RPM, but little about apt.
> <snip>
> 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.
Two lists is a good idea. We already getting quite a bit of developer
traffic, and I hope we'll get more.
> 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 :-)
I think serious consideration should be given to letting GCL wither
away. (Please feel free to disagree.) We aren't that far away from
getting Maxima to work well with ANSI Common Lisps. There are already a
number of serious Lisp people working on CLISP, CMUCL and SBCL. Perhaps
Lisp maintenance efforts would be better spent there.
> 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.
I don't quite understand what you have in mind here. Could you
elaborate?
Best,
Jim