RE: [Axiom-developer] opinion

[C Y]

--- "Page, Bill" <address@hidden> wrote:

> This graph shows that the number of Debian users who reported
> installing Axiom via popularity-contest has increased by about
> 150% (from 40 to 60) over the last year
> 
>
http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php?packages=axiom&show_
> installed=on&show_vote=on&beenhere=1
> 
> About 10 people report using Axiom "regularly" and this hasn't
> changed much over the year.
> 
> The total number of Maxima users reporting is about 5 times the
> number number of Axiom users and also seems to have increased
> by about the same percentage in the same time period
> 
>
http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php?packages=maxima&show
> _installed=on&show_vote=on&beenhere=1
> 
> with about 50 people who report using Maxima "regularly" and this
> also hasn't changed.

This is not surprising.  Please keep in mind that a)  a large number of
people will try out this type of program upon hearing about it and b) 
a large percentage of those people will drop it like a hot potato when
they discover it does not have a friendly GUI, or that it is designed
for work too complicated for them.  I'm guilty of this for other
projects - brlcad and blender come readily to mind as programs I
download and install, but don't (yet) have the skill to use for
anything serious.  I keep them installed and updated because I know how
powerful they are, and I like having that power available on my machine
if I should need to take the time to use it :-).  Silly, I know, and
probably a bit exasperating to the developers, but when it's free...
:-).  The ones who keep using it without a friendly GUI are the serious
users, and that will always tend to be a smaller crowd since the kind
of work that demands regular use of a CAS is not for the faint of
heart.  Now that I think about it I would be curious as to what
Mathematica and Maple's install bases are - I'm betting even there it
can't be over a few tens or hundreds of thousands, even counting
student editions, universities, and industry.  And they both have
polished GUIs, many packages, inertia, and commercial marketing
budgets.  Maxima and Axiom both have a lot of history behind them, but
not as widely used standards.
 
> I agree. However if we do attempt to compare the debian Axiom
> popcon numbers with the Axiom for Windows downloads from the
> axiom-developer.org site, then the number Linux users is still so
> small as to be "off the map".

I would expect this to be the case - most people use Windows, and if an
easy install of Axiom is available they'll go for it.  Maxima's
download stats show a considerable bias towards the Windows side of
things.
 
> I agree but I think that this is an interesting question: Does
> the increase in the number of Axiom for Windows users translate
> into an increase in the number of involved Axiom *developers*?
> 
> So far postings to the axiom-developer web site and to this email
> list suggest that the answer to this quesiton is "no", at least
> not within the time period that the Windows version has been
> available (since December 2004). :(

Developing free software on Windows is a) very difficult and b) very
frustrating.  People like Mike and David have a very special skill set
that is difficult to duplicate and takes a special kind of devotion. 
>From the Maxima experience, getting things working on Windows is always
the most exasperating part of any release.  The bugs are easy to find
but hard to fix - they vary between different versions of Windows, and
even between different installs of the same version of Windows.  The
port of the gnu toolset to Windows (mingw and friends?) is the only way
to generate a stand alone binary for Windows using only free software,
and I think it is fair to say those tools are still evolving.  When you
add all this up, plus the average profile of your Linux/*BSD users (on
a statistical basis) vs. your Windows users, the odds that a Linux/*BSD
user will be up on at least the basics of software development, and
have a well integrated toolset for developing already on his/her
machine, are MUCH higher.  So Windows developers are rare as a
percentage of all Windows users, free software Windows developers are
rarer still, and the intersecting set of Windows free software
developers interested in CAS work is downright tiny.  

Eeep.  Now that I thought that out, I'll take this moment to say -
THANK YOU, Windows developers!  And thank you Tim Daly (and Bill
Schelter) for making all this possible in the first place.

CY


                
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