Hello all:

Recently there as been a divisive discussion on the Axiom
deveopers list which has led to an Axiom fork. Two lead developers,
Martin Rubey and Waldek Hebisch quit. Both are extraordinarily talented
programmers and Martin is the author of GUESS, a unique and
important package which I described in
http://www.sagemath.org:9001/Axiom_as_an_OSCAS
The posts labels with "fork" or "fricas" at
http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.comp.mathematics.axiom.devel/
contain some of the relevant threads. I'll leave it to others to
summarize the discussion, I found it rather sad and somewhat shocking.

I would like to open up a partnership with these and other Axiom
developers and SAGE, in the hopes of eventually adding to SAGE
the CAS functionality which is unique to Axiom. In the hopes of
heading off any developer conflicts which echo the recent
fork, I'd like to open up a discussion on how this might be structured.

Some ideas:
1. Assuimg Axiom becomes part of SAGE, all Axiom patches are
to be voted on democratically among the Axiom deveopers.
(Majority rules.)
2. If/when there is an agreement in principal to begin a SAGE/Axiom
partnership, hopefully including at least (in alphabetical order)
Waldek Hebisch, Ralf Hemmecke, Bill Page, and Martin Rubey
on the Axiom side, I could (or someone else could) start a
sage-axiom googlegroups list.
3. Finally, thanks to google, I found a paper which states that
Axiom is a trademark of NAG. Whether this is true or not,
or whether this affects what this potential sage-axiom fork should be
called, may be worth discussing.

I have no strong opinions except that I think a partnership can
be potentially very exciting and advantageous for both sides.
If there is anything I can do, within my limited abilities, I'll be
happy to help.

Any comments on any of this?

- David Joyner

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