Macsyma is still sold???



--- Martin RUBEY <rubey@labri.fr> wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, C Y wrote:
> 
> might be nice. However, I don't have the feeling that there was a
> great response to your (?) message on sci.math.symbolic asking for 
> old user code for macsyma, was there? I feel that most people are 
> not very interested...

I got a couple responses.  Dr. Rand generously contributed the code he
had written for his book - commiting to share/contrib is on my list,
once my home machine is operational again.  But on the whole, you're
right.  We would probably have to make a much bigger splash before
people think we're worth the effort.

> This is what I think is rather sad about it - and I think it's very
> likely that it's going to be that way... I believe it will be a long 
> way to go until maxima catches up, and then macsyma will be pretty 
> much dead.

I agree it is sad, but the situation is unfortunately not without
precident.  It's one of the serious drawbacks of commercial software
that the wheel seems to get reinvented for non-technical reasons every
so often. Fortunatley Maxima exists, so work doesn't have to begin from
scratch.

> I'd rather have maxima catch up immediately (and keep macsyma alive).
> It's just waste of brain, I think.

It is.  If a university or someone were to buy the code from Symbolics
and open it up, that would probably be the best case, but I don't see
that happening in a big hurry.

CY

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