On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 5:32 AM, Gabriel Dos Reis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 2:39 AM, mabshoff > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > On Apr 22, 9:15 am, "Alfredo Portes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 1:41 AM, mabshoff > > > > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > Well, I think NAG chose the "non-commercial only" license on purpose. > > > > We have discussed the issue here before and everybody agrees that it > > > > is GPL incompatible. But I have little hope that Sage's potential > > > > interest in Aldor would get somebody to change the license. A "non- > > > > commercial only" Open Source license is often the kiss of death to a > > > > project. Abandoned by its commercial parent company, but not free in > > > > reality it is neither here nor there. Either you make the code free > > > > [your choice: GPL, LGPL, MIT, BSD] or you don't. It is either Open > > > > Source code or it isn't, just like you can't be a little big > > > > pregnant :) > > > > > > Yes, just like QT...oh wait. > > > > Well, I don't think the situation is comparable. TrollTech understood > > Open Source way back. Axiom was released under BSD, so why the > > different treatment for Aldor? > > From the little I know, the situation -- as it has been carefully explained > to me -- is far more complicated, and I'm not sure it is one that can be > resolved by emails. All I can say is that there really are good guys at > NAG who would not like to see Axiom die (as it was) and they did the best > to make it open source under a very liberal license (no poison). The > surrounding environment and conditions for releasing Aldor had changed from > what they were back when Axiom was released. I would recommend > you talk to Mike Dewar, Stephen Watt, Barry Trager (among others) about > the situation. However, I doubt it can be resolved by public emails -- and > if > it is resolved by public emails, then that is fantastic!.
I can imagine. Is the conclusion to draw from the above that you think it unlikely Aldor will be released under a standard open source license in the near future, but that you very much wish it would be? > > > > > > > > > A petition to really open source Aldor won't hurt > > > I think. What is the worst that can happen? Yes, I know the answer "go > and > > > start one" :-( > > > > Out of curiosity: Are there download statistics of Aldor binaries and > > source? Is there any kind of estimate of user numbers? How far along > > is FriCAS and/or OpenAxiom from using "pure" Aldor and no lisp? Are > > there any benchmarks to compare those two? > > Because of licensing issues -- OpenAxiom is released under BSD license -- > and dependency problems, I cannot make OpenAxiom purely depending > on Aldor. Whoever, it should be possible to call Aldor libraries from > OpenAxiom > and vice versa (and if that does not work, it is likely a bug in OpenAxiom). You didn't answer the questions about downloads/users/etc. Should we write to NAG to ask? > > As I have stated many times, and part of the reasons for OpenAxiom, I > would like to > get away from Lisp as soon as possible: This isn't negociable. For people in Sage-devel who don't know, OpenAxiom has the following goal (from their website): "OpenAxiom strives to support ubiquitous, advanced, high quality open source computer algebra on major operating systems, in particular major Unix variants, GNU/Linux variants, Windows, and handheld devices. It aims at being the open source computer algebra system of choice for research, teaching, engineering, etc." Thus their goals overlap a lot with Sage, and they do care a great deal about portability to different platforms. Gaby -- since our goals are so similar I hope there are ways we can work together. > From my perspective, it is NOT a scalable technology for writing large > scale systems > given the zoo of users, developers, and development environments we have > today. > I know Lisp enthusiasts think the opposite and are likely to say "you > don't get it". Well I agree completely with you. > At the moment, I don't have formal benchmark to assess OpenAxiom, > except the tiny > regression testsuite. I must also confess that most of my work wo far > has concentrated > on getting rid of as mush Lisps as can and fixing the compiler and > interpreter. The > design of the Algebraic Virtual Machine for OpenAxiom is still progressing. How are you getting rid of as much Lisp as you can in OpenAxiom? Does this involve porting Lisp code to Aldor, or ? Also, what is the Alebraic Virtual Machine? I think these are all good questions to discuss on #sage-devel, since Sage is about unifying all mathematical software systems, so it is very good to be aware of what ideas you have in the pipeline for OpenAxiom. -- William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
