Re: [Axiom-legal] Fwd: [Axiom-developer] Re: [open-axiom-devel] [fricas-devel] umlaut in Guess - mailing list for algebra

[Frederic Lehobey]

Hi,

Bill Page <address@hidden> (2007-09-08 20:41:33) :
> On 9/8/07, Frederic Lehobey <address@hidden> wrote:
> > ...
> > It [APL2] prevents integration of Aldor in free software distributions
> > as Debian or Fedora. (The kind of things I am interested in.)
> 
> Debian distributes non-free software.

They are not really part of Debian but provided as a courtesy to
Debian users: http://www.debian.org/social_contract (#5)

And I can tell you that technically it makes a real
difference. Packages in non-free do not take advantage of all the
benefits of the Debian infrastructure (autobuilders, etc.).

> > Anyway, Aldor is by no standard open source or free software. I have
> > personally been trapped in the past in such non-free licences. I will
> > never consider again non-free sofware for scientific work. But it is
> > my personal choice and I can understand you make others.
> >
> 
> Could you give an example of how you think you might be "trapped" by
> using Aldor under APL2?

The scenario I gave in my previous message is not possible. I cannot
either distribute Aldor alongside many other free software libraries
(can you link Aldor with free libraries?). I agree you can
rethorically view this as a symmetric problem with the free libraries
that have incompatible license with APL2. But I do not want to run
into that game: Aldor is the bad non-free player.

> > It makes me simply stronger in my mind that we (the Axiom community)
> > had nothing good to expect from Aldor and from *waiting* for its
> > release as (real) open source software (that has not yet occured).
> >
> 
> Who was waiting? The various incarnations of Axiom have all made
> improvements to Spad (to a greater or lesser degree).

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-legal/2006-11/msg00017.html

> Still Aldor is still by far very much superior to Spad and in my
> opinion is very likely to remain so provided that it can attrack an
> active developer community.

Nothing has changed yet to my eyes:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-legal/2006-11/msg00020.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-legal/2006-11/msg00024.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-legal/2006-11/msg00027.html

Best regards,
Frédéric Lehobey