--- Jim_Garrett@bd.com wrote:
>
> Please suffer a newbie with no Macsyma experience to offer some
> commentary: Are things really so bad?
No. Macsyma Inc. is a frustrating situation, but one that we have know
about for a long time.
> I get the impression that quite a few people are using Maxima who are
> really pining for Macsyma. This is perfectly reasonable and beyond
> reproach: if you like Macsyma and now do not have access to it, your
> choice has been diminished and you have every right to try to revive
> Macsyma, or create something very Macsyma-like.
We're not really pining for Macsyma - it's that a lot of the things we
will have to fix have already been fixed in that version of the code.
It's unfortunate that we have to reinvent the wheel again. But I think
enough of us have been burned by commercial software vanishing out from
under us that we aren't eager to dive back into that situation.
> However, let's not forget that getting Maxima GPL'd offers some new
> opportunities. For one, Maxima is unlikely to ever disappear as
> Macsyma essentially has (for now, anyway). Is it "wasted brain" to
> replicate Macsyma features from scratch? Perhaps, but it's brain
> more safely invested. I'm investing brain in learning Maxima
> because it will almost certainly always be there, and no one can take
> it from me. I could probably hit my boss up for Mathematica, but I'm
> going with Maxima instead.
No question, we will survive. I suppose one might get that impression
from reading the last few emails, but no (or almost no) one here is
terribly excited about commercial Macsyma reappearing on the market,
except that more market share of a Macsyma like system helps our
potential user base. We are going with the open source version
regardless. But it's sort of annoying to see a piece of software with
so many fixes we could use just sitting there doing nothing.
> Bugs? We can clean up bugs. Open-source is great for that. We
> might clean up bugs that Symbolics didn't know about. In time Maxima
> may develop in ways Macsyma never did, and we'll have bugs Macsyma
> never had. ;^) We may as well get used to it now.
We will eventually, of course, but the developers on Macsyma did some
very very good work before the program came to an end. Duplicating
that effort will not be trivial, especially given the mathematical
knowledge and lisp coding skill that is demanded of potential coders.
Not to mention the skill needed to even find a bug is a lot higher than
average. I'm not saying we can't do it, but the process will be a long
one. Very much worthwhile, but long.
> What's less obvious is that open-source software is often extended in
> interesting, unpredictable ways. We might not match Macsyma feature
> for feature, but I'll bet that if development continues, and we have
> an active community, we will begin seeing new features that Macsyma
> doesn't have, in fact features that Symbolics, Inc.'s marketing
> department would never have thought of in a millenium. It's
> surprising what can happen when users have freedom....
That of course is one of the reasons Maxima interests so many people.
> If Maxima catches on in a similar way, there's no telling what it
> could look like in 5 or 10 years. Perhaps not Macsyma, perhaps
> better than Macsyma, perhaps doing things no one ever thought to do
> with Macsyma.
There's no telling. I seriously doubt five years will serve to equal
the commercial Macsyma, but ten years might start to get us there. It
largely depends on our developer resources and the number of
complaining users we can manage to accumulate ;-).
> Or, like many open-source projects, Maxima could sink into obscurity.
That is not terribly likely - Maxima already has a lot of very powerful
routines and capabilities unique in the open source world. Axiom, when
released, will probably be our biggest competition, but even there the
thinking behind the systems is different. Maxima, IMHO at least, is in
the best position to become the Mathematica replacement for the open
source world.
> It all depends on the community. It seems that, even though Maxima
> has been GPL'd since 1998, these are early days in the life of
Maxima,
> and activity is occurring (reorganizing after Dr. Schelter's death,
> new web site, nice manual in the works....). If we're concerned
> about Maxima, perhaps the most important thing we could do is help
the
> community grow by spreading the word. Though it may fall short of
> Macsyma at the moment, it seems good enough to me to warrant interest
> from many people who may not yet know about it.
I think the time for our major entry into the limelight will be after
6.0, when we have fixed all the major math bugs we can find. My hunch
is we will need new gui and plotting work before we see a serious
interest level on a large scale, but it's hard to say.
CY
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com