Hello, As there was interest about MuPAD on this list, I forward a message I received from Benno Fuchssteiner, for the latest news.
Best wishes ------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 18:03:56 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: "B. Fuchssteiner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Dear MuPAD friend, At the occasion of the coming holiday season let me give you some information about the state and the fate of MuPAD. So far, nothing has changed fundamentally since I put my internet documentation on the web. Here are some points which might find you interest: Fortunately I was able to find the resources for employing my MuPAD colleagues for the time until end of March. After March the situation looks very dim, however there are some signs of hope (and I am an indestructible optimist). The students of Paderborn University have started a campaign in order to support MuPAD, which you may find under <http://savemupad.neoforge.de/>http://savemupad.neoforge.de/ At that web page they are collecting signatures. The organizers of that initiative (who are not personal known to me) however informed me that they are surprised about the amount of political implications which have arisen. I do not believe that this action will lead to much success; however I am extremely grateful about that support since it certainly helps us to keep up our spirit. I should also say, that my confidence in the students of Paderborn University has never wavered. The German special interest group on computer algebra, representing three of the most prestigious scientific unions, namely GI (Gesellschaft für Informatik), GAMM (Gesellschaft für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik), and the DMV (Deutsche Mathematiker Vereinigung) has written an open letter on behalf of MuPAD to the authorities of Paderborn University, the government of Northrhine-Westfalia and a number of influential politicians. So far there is not yet any success of that action, apart from a mendacious answer of UPB (Paderborn University). This answer also was written to a MuPAD friend who directly intervened with Paderborn University, at that occasion I asked for permission of UPB to publish that answer on my Web page, but permission was declined, which I have to take serious since still I am under thread that UPB will sue me for damage. However, UPB did not yet sue me for stating on my web page that they employed criminal methods in order to finish the MuPAD project, neither did they contradict to that statement yet, although they were asked by many to contradict or at least to comment on that claim. Recently in the news section of Heise-Online, a most influential news service, there was a report on the present difficulties of MuPAD, for the English version see: <http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/66442>http://www.heise.de /english/newsticker/news/66442 To this news service many internet pages are linked, so in the week after that news appeared more than 350 000 web pages were referring to that headline. By the same author an article in CT (Germanys most prestigious Computer Journal, 440 000 sold copies) appeared. I am grateful for these articles which supported my efforts morally, however knowing the system and realizing that the German public at the moment is more interesting in other problems, I doubt that there will be any effect. Before the last election in our state (in Mai) I was impressed by the promises of some of the politicians at that time in opposition to the government. These promises made clear how much would change for MuPAD once the election was won. Well it was, but nothing has happened so far. However, some of these politicians work hard on fulfilling these promises but also they are surprised to see how difficult things are to move once some anonymous administration and bureaucracy has decided on its course. Of course, and that is the most important point, we received much moral support by direct mail from old friends and new users throughout the world, a fact for which I am very grateful, since it helps to keep up spirits when prospect is so grim. Also, some of these users convinced their institutions to buy a MuPAD copy, help which also was welcome. I will inform you from time to time about the state and eventually I will put new information on my web page (although I did not definitely decide on that). Please accept my best wishes for the coming season and for the best in 2006 and let me thank that so many of you supported MuPAD in the past, yours sincerely Benno Fuchssteiner Prof. Dr. Benno Fuchssteiner mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Obernheideweg 19 http://mupad.de/ D 33106 Paderborn, Germany Phone: +49 (0) 5254-66835 Fax and answering machine: +49 (0) 721 151 348516 ------- End of forwarded message [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.univ-orleans.fr/EXT/ASTEX ftp://ftp.univ-orleans.fr/pub/tex/PC/AsTeX liste de discussion: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Abonnement à la liste: envoyer un message de contenu "sub astex Nom Prenom Etablissement" à [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
