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

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, James Frye wrote:

> On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Martin RUBEY wrote:
> 
> > ...I'm pretty sure that maxima can be made *very* fast.  Simply
> > monitor your code (this should be possible with metering.lisp), take out
> > the slow bits and rewrite them in lisp. 
> 
> Easy enough to say.  Possibly easy to do IF you are one of those people
> who can understand lisp.  From my own experience, though, that's only a
> small fraction of the potential user base.

I think I misstated my opinion. I really should have said: 

"maxima is very fast and can be made *very* fast".

For the second part you might not even need lisp: I believe, with gcl you 
can also use C. But I've no experience with this.
 
> I think that may in the long run be the biggest obstacle to maxima's
> growth: simply finding the people who are both interested and able to work
> on the project.

Yes and no, I think. *I* think for those who know and like lisp maxima has 
a big advantage over other CAS. The others may be equally well served by 
any other CAS -- disregarding the price. However, at least on university, 
price is not necessarily the issue: At least in France, MuPad seems to be 
free for universities, Maple is available. In Austria, MuPad 
and Mathematica is available. In short: some CAS is always there -- of 
course, it might well be that you don't like this particular one...

Martin
(Please fill out the questionnaire, I'm interested in your opinions!)