Subject: RE: Reconsidering the GPL licensing of Maxima
From: Dudley, Jeremy
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2005 09:36:16 +0100
MathSoft already use some Maple subset in MathCad, so it is not so much that they wish to add CAS functionality, as that they wish to switch.
Since MathCad doesn't appear to be written in Lisp there would be linking problems whether Maxima was compiled into MathCad or made available as a library. I understood the GPL restrictions on linking to apply to the case where the library was linked in at compile time; a library that is dynamically linked could, I thought, meet the conditions of the GPL by making available the code changes to provide a DLL linkage. As another poster wrote this must be at least an implicit understanding, otherwise any commercial program under Linux that uses Linux functionality would have to be GPLed as well.
Maxima effectively operates through the command line, so would it not be sufficient for that to be the API access, with MathCad having to parse between their representation and that of Maxima, pretty much as wxMaxima appears to do, as also as their existing MathCad-Maple interface appears to do? When the Maple engine returns a result that their parser cannot handle we get a message to that effect, and that the complex expression is on the clipboard for us to paste into any other document for us to view.
If, then, Maxima is developed with a clear distinction between Maxima and MathCad, and in a manner that allows any MathSoft development on Maxima to be available to the rest of the Maxima community (more likely with an API/DLL development than with a fully embedded product) this would adequately meet what is wanted as the outcome of the GPL.
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