On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 6:50 AM, Bill Page <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Michael,
>
> Wow, it sure it nice to have someone on the "other end of the phone",
> so as to speak ... :-) I think it is really great that Google came
> through with financial support that is making it possible for you and
> others to dedicate so much time to this.
I'm very thankful to them. By the way, Microsoft Research
is also funding Sage work right now, and I'm also very grateful
to them.
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 2:41 AM, mabshoff wrote:
> >
> > On Apr 22, 7:36 am, "Bill Page" wrote:
> > ...
>
> > > The most recent branch 'Version_2_6_8pre' is what we normally
> > > use to build Axiom. There is a change about 4 months old. If I
> > > recall correctly 'Version_2_6_8pre' actually corresponds to the
> > > version distributed on Debian and would probably be the most
> > > likely to be stable on the largest number of platforms.
> >
> > At least testing ships CVS head.
>
> Are you sure? I suppose that we had better check with Camm.
Please do.
>
> > And not to be too picky here: The last tarball from the website
> > predates OSX 10.5 and also Solaris 10, so maybe it is time to
> > cut another bug fix release since everybody seems to be using
> > 2.6.8CVS anyway.
>
> Yes, 2.6.8pre (as in pre-release). 2.6.8 was never "officially" released.
>
>
> > But when I build stable releases I do not poke around in the CVS
> > repo. Asking could have helped, but if nobody bothered to update
> > the website in three years anyway what is the point? 2.6.7 actually
> > also miserably fails on Solaris 9 for me, and that has been out for
> > a while before 2.6.7.
> >
>
> This is open source age and GCL existed well before that. I am not
> making excuses but ...
GCL started in 1984 I guess.
>
> > ...
>
> > Well, since the Maxima folks now have told us that they will
> > support ecls soon the decision has been made on our end to
> > switch to Maxima +ecls.
>
> Choose your own poison. ;-) Actually I don't know much about ecl but I
> seriously doubt the long term viability of ecl will be any different
> than the half dozen other alternatives.
Perhaps you should "know more about ecl" before you make such assertions.
I also don't know much about ecl, but I do know that Michael Abshoff
knows how to evaluate code and build systems well, and if he says that ecls
is much more viable codewise I wouldn't try to refute it by simply saying
"I seriously doubt it" without a good argument. Michael did give real
technical arguments for ecls.
Aside: Several very successful senior industry-type people
have mentioned to me on several occasions that successful
software projects tends to have a life cycle, which is maybe around 30 years.
I do not know if I believe this, but their reasoning goes that software does
something like this:
Years 0-9: rapid growth of new project by a bunch of "smart kids"
Years 10-19: stability; usability
Years 20-29: decline
GCL is from 1984.
I'm still not at all sure I buy into this "30 year lifecycle" deal,
but there is probably something to it. Perhaps the only
way to escape it is to reinvent the software -- e.g.,
Cayley which started in 1973, was reinvented as Magma
in the early 1990s. Maybe Magma is being reinvented
as Sage... :-)
> Of course I am all for
> co-operation between projects so if Maxima is willing to make a
> version that is more suitable for use in Sage, the more power (money
> and resources ...) to them! :-)
Good.
>
>
> > There is no point in beating the dead horse that is gcl.
>
> I take offense. gcl is not a dead horse no matter how neglected it
> might look to you.
>
>
> > ecls has MSVC support *today* and is probably trivially to port to
> > Sun Forte if it doesn't run already. The mailing list is alive and well.
> > I have looked at the code and fixed some issues myself, so why
> > would I want to touch gcl?
> >
>
> I don't know. The OpenAxiom and FriCAS forks of Axiom work on ecl so I
> am also not too worried about gcl in the long run.
>
>
>
> > > -----------
> > >
> > > Anyway, none of this solves the immediate problem of providing
> > > support for symbolic mathematics in Sage without adding the
> > > burden of supporting Lisp in all target environments. Right now
> > > you depend on the linkage with Maxima for this feature, And I
> > > think you see symbolic manipulation as a particular domain or
> > > mode of computation within Sage rather than the reason d'etre
> > > of computer algebra systems.
> > >
> > > I would like to argue however that from an overall design perspective
> > > Axiom is a better match for Sage than Maxima. Like Sage itself,
> > > the Axiom library is built-up in a (more or less) rigorous manner
> > > from more fundamental mathematical constructions. One of these
> > > complex constructions is called 'Expression'. This is the domain
> > > in which most symbolic calculations are done in Axiom. However
> > > as it will be in Sage, it is necessary that Expression interact in
> > > a well-defined manner with other Axiom domains of computation.
> > > I believe that if you were to re-implement the Maxima symbolic
> > > functionality within Sage (Python) then you would essentially be
> > > implementing something rather similar to the Expression domain
> > > in Axiom.
> > >
> > > In the longer term (pending resolution of the remaining open
> > > source license issues), Aldor could provide much of the same
> > > set of functionality of Axiom through it's BasicMath and other
> > > libraries without the overhead of the Axiom interpreter interface.
> > > This would completely eliminate the need for Lisp. I still have
> > > some hope that this could happen in the near future. If Sage
> > > were to pursue this path, I think the Aldor license issues might
> > > be resolved more quickly.
> >
> > Well, I think NAG chose the "non-commercial only" license on
> > purpose.
>
> Well yes, of course it was on purpose. They have stated that they felt
> obligated to do this by the terms under which they originally received
> Axiom (and Aldor) from IBM. NAG itself is a non-commerical
> organization.
This suggests that there is no possible way Aldor would ever
be released under a GPL-compatible license. Bummer. That
can only be bad for our community.
>
> > We have discussed the issue here before and everybody agrees
> > that it is GPL incompatible.
>
> Yes, that is the said truth. Some people at NAG apparently also have a
> philosophical disagreement with the Free Software Foundation about the
> reasonableness of GPL but I am still optimistic that this can be
> overcome. Afterall, you can only shoot yourself in the foot so many
> times ... ;-)
Just release under a GPL compatible license:
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html
>
>
> > But I have little hope that Sage's potential interest in Aldor
> > would get somebody to change the license.
>
> I think you greatly under estimate the power and momentum that Sage
> has now and how it is about to grow in the next year. (Too bad no one
> is issuing "shares".)
:-)
I'm really excited to see where Sage goes in the next year. I've been
very pleased with the progress we had during the last year.
> I should also admit that most of my rant in the previous email was in
> fact a prelude to asking William to try to intervene with NAG on our
> behalf precisely become of this new found influence.
Interesting. I think you have a point -- in connection with Sage we
have successfully got I think about 10 or more projects now to go
GPL-compatible (GPL or BSD). I think this is really good for the
open source math software community. [Note: many of these
packages are fairly specialized math software programs or libraries,
but are very very important to researchers in those area.]
Will there be any NAG people at ISSAC in Austria this summer?
I'll be there.
> > 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 :)
> >
>
> Apparently the Free Software Foundation does not agree:
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#semi-freeSoftware
>
> But I agree in principle with your point of view.
The following page makes a compelling argument I think:
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html
Personally I only agree with only some of what the Free Software Foundation
claims. I'm generally more of an Open Source guy than a Free Software guy.
Basically, I want to use the best possible tools for the job, and I think that
Open Source has the potential to make said tools for certain application
domains. Math software is definitely one of them.
-- William
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