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 <[email protected]> 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 > [email protected] > http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer > > > > -- Camm Maguire [email protected] ========================================================================== "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
