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

Dear Stavros,

I believe this is a very good idea written in an honest way towards
the possible contributors. Many sincere thanks for this effort!

I do not have any suggestions for modifications of the letter although,
personally, I would prefer that the ODE and LODE missing commands
could be also mentioned more explicitly in the letter, i.e. the ODE and
LODE related files, better ODE and LODE packages in Share.

A very interesting initiative as far as I am personally concerned.
No reservations by me.

Many thanks again for your help and best regards from Patras,

Nikos

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stavros Macrakis" <stavros.macrakis at verizon>
To: "C Y" <smustudent1@yahoo.com>; "James Amundson" <amundson@fnal.gov>
Cc: <maxima@mail.ma.utexas.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 2:17 AM
Subject: RE: 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.