--- "Nikolaos I. Ioakimidis" <ioakimidis@otenet.gr> wrote:
>
> In general, I completely agree with almost all of your comments
> below and your suggestion that a registry of Maxima-compatible
> software is perfect, I applaud it. It is also certain that we have to
> come into contact with the copyright owners of each package and,
> most probably, we will get a permission to distribute it with Maxima
> in a future release and after some stabilization. Jim has serious
> objections to be in a hurry in such matters (a reply by him to
> Cliff in a similar situation before few months).
It is of course up to Jim, but Wolfgang's report that the code appeared
to function (at least on a basic level) without problems came as a
considerable surprise to me. Personally, I can't see what harm it
would do to contact the author(s) and see if they would be willing to
contribute their code. We can basically put it in share in whatever
directory seems appropriate and if it needs some minor tweaking that
can happen either when someone is motivated to do it or when we get to
it as part of a general overhaul of the share code. If it is already
at least partially functional that might be an indication it is worth
including. Again however, Jim is the final authority on such matters
and I will wait for his go ahead before contacting anyone.
> With my recent messages I have tried to bring the attention and
> the interest of the colleagues on this situation: that of enriching
> Maxima with new packages as soon as this will become possible.
> In case of failure, I may undertake myself the task to come into
> contact with the authors of the packages under question and
> additional packages perhaps reaching up to the point to write
> to the owner of the old Macsyma Inc. (I have forgotten his
> name. Could you remind it to me?)
To the best of our knowledge, Andrew Topping is the one who has the
rights to the original Macsyma Inc. code. Dr. Fateman may know more,
but my total knowledge is pretty much from this email:
http://www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima/2002/001200.html
In the very beginning of the list there is a thread about this topic as
well:
http://www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima/2001/000030.html
> and try to get permissions
> for use and distribution at least to my students. Yet, I believe
> that this should happen gradually by the interested colleagues
> (such as you) and, perhaps, me too after the consent of Jim as
> far as the inclusion of such packages to Maxima is concerned.
As I recall, his concern was that we had enough code to fix up already
without adding more headaches. Which is true, but I think if we can
make the share directories as much as possible an archive of all
available Maxima packages available under a free license, that will be
a good thing. At this stage we are making no claim that everything in
share is functional - some of it is very broken, actually. But again,
that's just one man's opinion.
> On the other hand (you read the Maxima mailing list) perhaps
> a point of precedence for me now is to bring back to Maxima
> files and commands already present in DOE-Maxima and
> described in detail in the DOE-Maxima Reference Manual
> of Mike and, probably, in the Maxima Referene Manual. This I
> try to do as you understand and it is a very simple task since many
> colleagues have the files available through the distributions of
> DOE Maxima in the past and what is needed is that these
> can be added in the distribution (in the Maxima language I
> mean). Such a simple task! (I do not know about copyright
> matters with respect to DOE-Maxima.)
If I understand you correctly, you wish to locate older copies of
DOE-Maxima people have and incorporate code from those distributions
into this distribuiton? I would advise against doing that arbitrarily,
since our original code base is all we have explicit permission to
distribute under GPL. The thing to do would be to contact the original
authors, see if they still have the rights to the code, and if so see
if they would be willing to contribute it to the current effort.
The other way to do it would be to reimpliment the missing parts, which
is more work but safer.
I've often thought that at some point we should put out a call on the
sci.math.symbolic group for any old macsyma pacakges people have
written and would be willing to contribute. I don't know if 5.9.0 is
the right point for this, but it's worth keeping in mind that the
longer we wait the more likely it is people will have lost the old
code. We don't have to guarantee we will make it work or support it,
but just create an archive of code people can freely use and build off
of. What does the list think? (And Jim, feel free to pin my ears back
on this one. Just wanted to float it out there.)
CY
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