[Axiom-developer] Re: GCL used commercially?

[Richard Fateman]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> RJF wrote
>     I think that the Macsyma company used Austin-Kyoto-Common-Lisp
>     (which I believe is related to GCL) for its unix-sun/hp/.... version.
>
> RMS wrote:

> GCL is the same program as was formerly called AKCL.  The developers
> agreed to make it a GNU package.
>
> I believe Macsyma is released under the GPL now, so there would
> be no difficulty running it on GCL even if GCL were GPL'd.

The open-source version of Macsyma "Maxima", a descendent of the
1982 or so version that I forced Joel Moses and Mike Dertouzos to
release to the department of energy,  is GPL licensed thanks to
the efforts of the late Bill Schelter.

The commercial version, which was enhanced by Symbolics and then
"Macsyma Inc" for about 20 years, is not public.  The Macsyma INc
people supported and enhanced AKCL.  I do not know if their
changes to AKCL were made public, but I suspect not. Certainly
their changes to Macsyma are not public.

Regards
RJF