[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom Tenth Anniversary on August 11,2010
From: |
Camm Maguire |
Subject: |
Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom Tenth Anniversary on August 11,2010 |
Date: |
Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:49:20 -0400 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.2 (gnu/linux) |
Greetings! Tim, this history is simply breathtaking. Thank you so
much for all you have done and continue to do for this project.
Congratulations, and happy anniversary!
Take care,
Tim Daly <address@hidden> writes:
> 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 mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
>
>
>
>
--
Camm Maguire address@hidden
==========================================================================
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah