Contributed code, etc. (was [Maxima] Teaching differential equations with Maxima)

--- James Amundson <amundson@fnal.gov> wrote:
> ...I didn't want to spend time seeking out code without good reason.
You
> give a good reason. Please don't let me deter you from your efforts.

I have a mailing list of alumni of the Macsyma group -- not just people
who worked at M.I.T., at Symbolics, at Macsyma, Inc., but also users who
contributed code.

I would be happy to ask them if they have any code we can use.  Of
course, we'd want them to assure us that the code is not encumbered by
copyright.  What do you think of the following draft letter:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dear Colleague,

Maxima is the free, GPL-licensed descendant of DOE Macsyma (more info
below).

If you have any Lisp or Macsyma code you would like to contribute to the
project, we'd be very grateful.  Of course, we can only accept code
which belongs to you, which is in the public domain, or which is under a
free software license.  We cannot accept code which is copyrighted by
Macsyma, Inc. or Symbolics -- even if it does not have a
MacsymaInc/Symbolics copyright notice: if it was written for them, or by
someone who worked for them at the time, we have to presume that they
hold the copyright.

In particular, it would be nice to recover some of the missing
user-contributed Share libraries (stensr, trgsum, cgamma, series, asymp,
asympa, difsol, ndiffq, polsol, prrid).

If you do have code like this, please email it to me, with a statement
of why you believe it is legit (e.g. you wrote it in 1980).

     Stavros


Background on Maxima

Maxima is a free, open source computer algebra system
(http://maxima.sourceforge.net/).  It is based on DOE Macsyma (released
to GPL in 1998 http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/maxima-doe-auth.gif)
with enhancements by the late Bill Schelter and others.  It runs under
many Lisps (including GCL, CLisp, CMUCL, SBCL, Allegro) on most Linux,
Windows, and Unix platforms.

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