>> [Maxima] suppresses the CLISP banner, which can be seen as unfair
>> to the CLISP developers
What should the banner include?
The banner should include the basic configuration information that we
want users to report back to us when there are bugs. That is, at least
the Maxima and Lisp versions. Probably also the OS version. The machine
type if it's not x86. Probably not necessary to include the gcc and C
libraries versions (unless we've had problems with them).
The banner should include a copyright/license notice. Speaking of
copyrights, I notice that though all the files include MIT's and
Schelter's copyright notices, none of them include the GPL. That would
be a good thing to add. It would also be good to have a (living)
copyright holder for all the changes that are now being made to the
code, and updated copyright dates.
The banner should point people to a Web page about the project, how to
get new versions, how to report bugs, etc.
As for credit, many people and organizations have contributed to Maxima
over the years. The core and vast bulk of the code of course comes from
the MIT Mathlab group, led by Joel Moses and the late Bill Martin; but
Rich Fateman has pointed out that there is even some important code that
dates to before the MIT Mathlab group. Rich's group at Berkeley
contributed to it. Schelter maintained it and contributed to it (and
got the DOE to agree to GPL it). Many users unaffiliated with MIT
contributed Share packages. Although some of these people are
immortalized in the code (cf. mosesflag, errrjf, ps-bmt-disrep, rzmac,
sign-gjc, even mathlab-group-members), most are not. And now of course
the entire free Maxima community is contributing to it. Less directly,
Lisp implementors, including the GCL implementors and the CLisp
implementors, contribute to it. Even less directly, the gcc
implementors contribute to it. So it would inevitably be unfair to
single out a subset of this large group, except perhaps the MIT Mathlab
group, which did after all create the vast bulk of the code. And it
would be unwieldy to include all contributors. That sort of thing
belongs on the Web, presumably somewhere off the project page.
So my suggestion would be very simple:
Maxima 5.6 on Clisp 2.27, Linux 2.4.19
Licensed under the GNU Public License
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/
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-s