Marketing (Was: Will Free Axiom change our world?)

On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Stavros Macrakis wrote:

> What do we have that Mathematica and Maple and Axiom don't have and vice
> versa?  

To me, the most important thing that Maxima has that Mathematica and Maple
don't is a (fairly) simple command-line interface.  It's a matter of
accessibility, especially for those with vision limitations.  The
university has web-based versions of both of the others available for
faculty & student use, and I spent a couple of weeks trying to get either
of them to use colors and fonts that I could actually read, with no luck
at all.  With Maxima, no problem.  (And I should add that I certainly
don't consider myself visually handicapped at all - my eyesight's good
enough to pass the commercial pilot's medical!)

I think this ties in well with the zero price/open source - at least as
open as anything written in Lisp could ever be :-)  It's something that
anyone with internet access can get for free and play around with,
something that would be especially useful for students.

As a "marketing" tool, perhaps someone with professional qualifications
could think about doing some sort of workbook that would demonstrate how
to use Maxima in typical undergraduate (or even high school) math courses?

James