It might be worth observing that the Department of Energy was happy to supply DOE Macsyma to Bill Schelter or to anyone else (except Fidel Castro) on almost any terms, non-exclusively They gave Bill permission to redistribute under GPL, because that was what Bill requested. DOE did not ask for, or in my opinion even understand what GPL meant. I think they would be perfectly happy to turn it over to Microsoft, Maple, Mathematica, or Sage as technology paid for by the government but now available for commercial use.
That was, of course, DOE Macsyma, and not sourceforge Maxima. Could Sage use DOE Macsyma? For many files, the only change that Bill made was to insert his copyright notice. There were some real files contributed by Bill, including macro definitions that papered over the difference between Maclisp, definitely NOT common lisp, and GCL, which is nearly common lisp. Maxima has many fixes and enhancements afterward, all presumably compatible with some GPL. Whether this is OK for Sage or not, I do not know. But it is unfortunate that RMS and FSF, has consumed the time of so many people who are not lawyers. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
