Differences between Maxima and Macsyma and GPL vs. commercial version

(I'm assuming you're interested in other people's answers since you
sent this to the list, sorry if I'm butting in.)

--- seberino@spawar.navy.mil wrote:
> Richard
> 
> Thanks for info.
> 
> (1) You mentioned Matlab.... is Maxima deficient in any
>     Matlab like functionality as compared to commercial 
>     version?  I assume you know of the Matlab clone
>     called Octave that is GPL'd?  I presume any deficiencies
>     could be fixed by just using Octave code?

Well, that's not so simple. There have been discussions about this sort
of thing - check the archives.  Essentially the conclusion was we have
a lot of other stuff to fix first, then we can think about working with
third party software like Octave, pari, etc.  Lots of things are
possible, but most of them are a LOT of work.  Check out the roadmap on
our main site for a picture of how things stand currently, and what the
next steps are.

> (2) Is the Common LISP code of Maxima well written, commented
>     and easy to maintain? 

Short answer - not yet.  Longer answer - much of it is well written in
the sense it is powerful and capable, but at the time a lot of the code
was written comments were seen as a liability for a couple reasons,
including hard disk space constraints.  So comments are rather lacking.

One of the long term goals of this project is to update it to modern
standards of documentation and commenting, but that is a work of many
years.  Basically, as pieces are delt with they are updated.

>     In short, is the GPL'd code on
>     a firm enough foundation that it is easy for other people to
>     learn it, improve on it and keep it evolving along side the
>     commercial competitors?

Um.  The core code, I would say you need a lot of lisp and math savvy
to deal with.  The focus of Macsyma was doing things right, and Maxima
intends to carry on that tradition.  So expect slow progress, but lots
of good stuff in the long run.

As for commercial competitors, currently we aren't a viable
"competitor" in the sense of threatening Mathematica or Maple's market
share.  People with the budget to get those programs will continue to
do so, and in all fairness they really are pretty good pieces of
software.  Maxima has the advantage of being open source/zero cost,
which is a deciding factor for some people, but those folks probably
weren't going to buy Mathematica licenses anyway.

That's today though.  In the distant future, who knows.  I don't really
see us ever besting Mathematica in the market share game, just because
they have lots and lots of specialized application packages written
specifically for their software (Feyncalc/Feynarts being a good example
- the work to duplicate that effort in Macsyma is non trivial, and
that's one of hundreds of packages.)  But we might someday take over in
areas like student labs and individual users, where the needs aren't so
severe and it's easier to write up what you need for a course.  There
we probably have much more appeal.

Of course, that's just me speculating.  Reality has a funny way of
defying all predictions.

CY

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