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[Axiom-developer] Axiom Tenth Anniversary on August 11,2010
From: |
Tim Daly |
Subject: |
[Axiom-developer] Axiom Tenth Anniversary on August 11,2010 |
Date: |
Sun, 08 Aug 2010 01:40:48 -0400 |
User-agent: |
Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (Windows/20090302) |
Axiom was originally developed at IBM Research under Dr. Richard
Jenks. The project went through several generations and had many
contributors. It was the one of the leading research projects at
the lab. Eventually IBM's fortunes changed and Axiom was sold to
the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG). For a while it was one of
"the big three" (along with Mathematica and Maple) commercial
systems.
In August of 2000 (August 11th, I believe) I had a conversation
with my son, Tim Daly Jr., who had called me to tell me that
Bill Schelter died.
I had worked with Bill on GCL (then called AKCL). Bill was under
contract to IBM to develop a lisp that would support Axiom. He
and I worked closely together on it. Bill not only built a lisp
to support Axiom but he worked to get a copy of Maxima as open
source.
I called Barry Trager, an IBM coworker and one of the fundamental
contributors to Axiom, to tell him about Bill. Barry told me that
NAG planned to remove Axiom from the commercial market.
I called NAG and they confirmed that they were going to stop
selling Axiom commercially. I asked them to release it as open
source and said that I would do what was necessary to make it
into freely available software.
NAG spent a considerable amount of time and effort to release
Axiom under the BSD license. They deserve a lot of credit for
ensuring that Axiom lives on. It took about a year to get the
CD containing the released sources. For various reasons there
were "missing parts" of the commercial version including the
techexplorer front-end, the numerics, and the Aldor compiler.
During that year there was a lot of debate about the goals
of Axiom. The open source version of Axiom was intended to be a
research platform, with no attempt to compete with commercial
offerings. Axiom's fundamental weakness as open source revolved
around the lack of deep documentation. The algorithms are hard,
the whole system internal structure was obscure, and the build
process was black magic. Some system internals were written in a
language nobody spoke. In order to correct these flaws the
focus was on completely rewriting the system, using literate
programming to provide a basis for integrating documentation
and code. Since Axiom is nearly a million "things of code" this
was expected to take a while (and is still ongoing 10 years later).
Axiom required a running copy of Axiom to build itself. But an
open source version could not assume the user already had Axiom.
So the fundamental problem was how to get around this circular issue.
This represented a major stumbling block that consumed a large portion
of the time from the CD release until the first open source
version "went live". The lattice of 1100 objects had to be
sorted, an inner clique of co-dependent objects had to be found,
and a method of building this clique and lattice needed to be
invented. Solving this problem took up most of the time from the
release. A second issue was that the commercial version ran on a
byte-coded interpreted lisp which I could not get to build. Axiom
moved back to AKCL (now GCL) with the help of Camm Maguire. All of
this work was supported by Dr. Gilbert Baumslag (CCNY).
Today Axiom consists of 20 books which contain a large portion
of the literate source code. There is an associated video and
more are planned. Axiom has been validated against two
major test suites and a third suite is in process. Axiom has
more tests, more documentation, a simplified build system, a
single lisp-based internal langage, new algebra, the beginnings
of a numerics library, and a firefox front end. It is freely
available on savannah (GNU), sourceforge, and github. It is
downloaded thousands of times per month. It is used by researchers
worldwide. Work still remains and "The 30 Year Horizon" doesn't
seem to be any closer but the progress is obvious.
Axiom is the work of these 226 people, over a lifespan of
nearly 40 years. The people who have contributed to it, as clearly
as we can determine, are listed here. Some of them have already
passed away, including Dr. Richard Jenks, the founding father of
Axiom. This makes it all the more important that we document the
work so the next generation can carry on to "The 30 Year Horizon".
An alphabetical listing of contributors to AXIOM:
Cyril Alberga Roy Adler Christian Aistleitner
Richard Anderson George Andrews S.J. Atkins
Henry Baker Martin Baker Stephen Balzac
Yurij Baransky David R. Barton Gerald Baumgartner
Gilbert Baumslag Michael Becker Nelson H. F. Beebe
Jay Belanger David Bindel Fred Blair
Vladimir Bondarenko Mark Botch Alexandre Bouyer
Peter A. Broadbery Martin Brock Manuel Bronstein
Stephen Buchwald Florian Bundschuh Luanne Burns
William Burge
Quentin Carpent Robert Caviness Bruce Char
Ondrej Certik Cheekai Chin David V. Chudnovsky
Gregory V. Chudnovsky Josh Cohen Christophe Conil
Don Coppersmith George Corliss Robert Corless
Gary Cornell Meino Cramer Claire Di Crescenzo
David Cyganski
Nathaniel Daly Timothy Daly Sr. Timothy Daly Jr.
James H. Davenport Didier Deshommes Michael Dewar
Jean Della Dora Gabriel Dos Reis Claire DiCrescendo
Sam Dooley Lionel Ducos Lee Duhem
Martin Dunstan Brian Dupee Dominique Duval
Robert Edwards Heow Eide-Goodman Lars Erickson
Richard Fateman Bertfried Fauser Stuart Feldman
John Fletcher Brian Ford Albrecht Fortenbacher
George Frances Constantine Frangos Timothy Freeman
Korrinn Fu
Marc Gaetano Rudiger Gebauer Kathy Gerber
Patricia Gianni Samantha Goldrich Holger Gollan
Teresa Gomez-Diaz Laureano Gonzalez-Vega Stephen Gortler
Johannes Grabmeier Matt Grayson Klaus Ebbe Grue
James Griesmer Vladimir Grinberg Oswald Gschnitzer
Jocelyn Guidry
Gaetan Hache Steve Hague Satoshi Hamaguchi
Mike Hansen Richard Harke Bill Hart
Vilya Harvey Martin Hassner Arthur S. Hathaway
Dan Hatton Waldek Hebisch Karl Hegbloom
Ralf Hemmecke Henderson Antoine Hersen
Gernot Hueber
Pietro Iglio
Alejandro Jakubi Richard Jenks
Kai Kaminski Grant Keady Tony Kennedy
Ted Kosan Paul Kosinski Klaus Kusche
Bernhard Kutzler
Tim Lahey Larry Lambe Kaj Laurson
Franz Lehner Frederic Lehobey Michel Levaud
Howard Levy Liu Xiaojun Rudiger Loos
Michael Lucks Richard Luczak
Camm Maguire Francois Maltey Alasdair McAndrew
Bob McElrath Michael McGettrick Ian Meikle
David Mentre Victor S. Miller Gerard Milmeister
Mohammed Mobarak H. Michael Moeller Michael Monagan
Marc Moreno-Maza Scott Morrison Joel Moses
Mark Murray
William Naylor Patrice Naudin C. Andrew Neff
John Nelder Godfrey Nolan Arthur Norman
Jinzhong Niu
Michael O'Connor Summat Oemrawsingh Kostas Oikonomou
Humberto Ortiz-Zuazaga
Julian A. Padget Bill Page David Parnas
Susan Pelzel Michel Petitot Didier Pinchon
Ayal Pinkus Jose Alfredo Portes
Claude Quitte
Arthur C. Ralfs Norman Ramsey Anatoly Raportirenko
Albert D. Rich Michael Richardson Renaud Rioboo
Jean Rivlin Nicolas Robidoux Simon Robinson
Raymond Rogers Michael Rothstein Martin Rubey
Philip Santas Alfred Scheerhorn William Schelter
Gerhard Schneider Martin Schoenert Marshall Schor
Frithjof Schulze Fritz Schwarz Steven Segletes
Nick Simicich William Sit Elena Smirnova
Jonathan Steinbach Fabio Stumbo Christine Sundaresan
Robert Sutor Moss E. Sweedler Eugene Surowitz
Max Tegmark James Thatcher Balbir Thomas
Mike Thomas Dylan Thurston Steve Toleque
Barry Trager Themos T. Tsikas
Gregory Vanuxem
Bernhard Wall Stephen Watt Jaap Weel
Juergen Weiss M. Weller Mark Wegman
James Wen Thorsten Werther Michael Wester
John M. Wiley Berhard Will Clifton J. Williamson
Stephen Wilson Shmuel Winograd Robert Wisbauer
Sandra Wityak Waldemar Wiwianka Knut Wolf
Clifford Yapp David Yun
Vadim Zhytnikov Richard Zippel Evelyn Zoernack
Bruno Zuercher Dan Zwillinger
- [Axiom-developer] Axiom Tenth Anniversary on August 11,2010,
Tim Daly <=