Re: a meta name for axiom, open.axiom, fricas. was: Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: [#55] Axiom doesn't run on Windows

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Bill Page wrote:
> On 12/20/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <address@hidden> wrote:
> > ... There is no confusion on my machines simply because I don't
> > need either FriCAS or OpenAxiom -- and I haven't installed them --
> > and I don't intend to.
>
> So are you arguing against Tim's point of view? If there is no
> confusion then why all this concern over a name?
>
> Regards,
> Bill Page.

I'm arguing in favor of a single Axiom, called Axiom. If FriCAS and 
OpenAxiom want to rejoin the main branch, that's one way. Another way is 
to ignore the other two and just use Axiom.

There are lots of things I don't put on my machines because they're not 
ready for prime time, and FriCAS and OpenAxiom fall into that class for 
a number of reasons including the potential directory name clashes. And 
I run "testing-level" (borderline unstable) boxes. I simply see no 
benefit to a recent fork of Axiom -- not enough has changed since the 
fork(s) to the parts of the package I really care about for me to want 
to spend time testing them.

Now if I find something broken in Axiom and it gets fixed, being open 
source, FriCAS and OpenAxiom are perfectly capable of picking it up. Or 
if someone puts something *useful* in one of the two, I'd take a look. I 
just don't think that's going to happen because of why the forks 
happened -- they came about for reasons other than the usefulness of the 
core language for applied mathematics.

In other words, "come back when you've got better math than Axiom". :)