Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: Axiom and commercial success

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

root <address@hidden> writes:

| > | I encourage you to raise your eyes to the horizon and ignore the
| > | rocky road under your feet.
| > 
| > that is well put; however, the rocky road needs to be dealt with, not
| > just ignored.  How do you get people on board for long-term projects
| > when you don't make room for them to make sure they can embark on the
| > long journey?
| 
| Do research.

yes, that is what counts; and you know what counts for tenure :-)
publish or prish; get grant or perish; etc. How does one convince NSF
to spend money in a legacy codes that only one person on the planet
understands, instead of building a new shiny tool? 

Axiom is an oportunity, no doubt.

[...good list of things to do snipped...]

interestingly, I spend a good of my night on only 5 points of your
long list before I saw it.  Three of them are listed "big" and the
other 2 are "small" :-/

| Room really isn't the issue. Time and money are.

Yes, that is part of what I call "room".  If we narrow sufficiently
the window for Axiom to shoot at the nearest target (e.g. "computer
algebra systems") we probably would have something for the immediat
future. I'm however less convinced that window is sufficient enough to
attract people that might contribute to many points on your list, and
attract fundings...

| \begin{flame}
| 
| All existing computational math platforms have suffered from the 
| total lack of vision by the traditional funding sources. The 
| NSF/Universities/Research Labs (traditional funding sources) used
| to consider "computer math" as leading edge research. They now 
| consider it a "solved problem with commercial implementations" (NSF).
| Or not a good revenue stream since it won't make money this quarter (IBM).
| Or a cross-discipline crevice (Universities).

That is a real concern for those of us in the US.

| Traditional funding sources, (at least in the US, the rest of the world
| seems rather more rational) seem unable to understand that the science 
| of computational mathematics is hardly born yet. It's like the funders
| have said "Plato discovered geometry... math is complete."
| 
| The NSF has a policy that "if there is a commercial implementation we
| don't fund it" and feels that Axiom has something to do with MMA and
| Maple.  We are being compared with the "commercial systems" and
| considered losers.

still; from time to time I see fundings for projcts "similar" in nature...

| "Do not compare yourselves to others or you will become vain or bitter"
| 
| \end{flame}
| 
| 
| Axiom is a research platform in computational mathematics.
| There is no competition, commercial or otherwise.
| Real science is not a commercial enterprise.
| Fund it with your time and energy.

I need to feed my family too :-)

| > How do you get people on board for long-term projects
| 
| I don't know what motivates people to skip sunshine and wrestle
| with hard problems. I'm irish. I don't do sunshine :-).
| 
| My primary job seems to be to carry this software thru the funding
| dark ages. I'd make progress quicker if I could but it takes a LOT
| of time to make sure it "just works". Most of the things I'm
| actually working on will take years to complete. But I'm in no hurry.

tenure-track has a clock ;-p

-- Gaby