Something Different. Maxima and the AMS (American Math Society)

And idea which has been floated from time to time, unsuccessfully
so far, is to have the AMS adopt Maxima in some way.

You know that the AMS has a special relationship with TeX
for typesetting. See for example
http://www.ams.org/tex/

and they are certainly aware of various computer algebra systems.

There is a page describing some of them,

http://www.ams.org/mathweb/mi-software.html

not entirely accurate any more...  but

the idea (very roughly speaking), is for the AMS
to endorse/adopt/support a program or programs for computer algebra.
Of course some things can't be done as easily with
Maxima as with other software, commercial or free, so
it would be senseless for the AMS to "require" only
Maxima in the way that TeX or AMSTeX is standardized.

But is there a hope that.... if  an author wished
to include a computer algebra program in his/her math paper,..
it would be nice if it ran in Maxima? (as opposed to expensive
commercial stuff only)?

Another thought is there could be some flow of resources from
AMS to the maxima project.

I think that mathematicians are, for the most part, keen on
free software; that doesn't the AMS would do something like
this.

 In fact, a standard joke is that academic controversies
are so bitter because so little is at stake...

Would we like a banner that says

"The official free computer algebra system of the AMS" ?


RJF