RE: [Axiom-developer] Aldor?

[Bill Page]

On January 12, 2006 11:39 AM Jay Belanger wrote:
> 
> "Bill Page" <address@hidden> writes:
> ...
> >
> > Please write to Steven Watt at
> >
> >    address@hidden
> >
> > and ask him.
> 
> Would it help to have more people write?

Yes! Please write to Steven Watt. I think it would definitely
help if it is clear to Steven that many people would like to
have Aldor open source. Maybe what we need is a kind of
"petition" that people could "sign" and email to him. I fear
that perhaps Steven does not take my claims that this is
desired by many people very seriously.

> 
>> From: Stephen Watt [mailto:address@hidden
>> Sent: October 20, 2005 11:07 PM
>> To: Bill Page
>> Subject: Re: compiling Aldor from source for x86-64
>> >
>> Dear Bill,
>> 
>> This is to let you know that I got your message.  I've taken
>> a bit longer to respond than planned because we are now
>> contemplating adopting a complete open source license for
>> everyone.  This might take a bit of time, however, so it
>> might make sense to go ahead on an individual basis with
>> you beforehand.
> 
> I don't understand this.  If it isn't open source for everyone,
> it isn't open source.  (I'm guessing open source will also
> mean free.) So what would the individual basis be?
> 

Perhaps a Steven Watt is not entirely clear on the concept of
"open source" (I think a lot of people continue to be confused
about this.) but what I understood by this was that, yes he
is planning to make Aldor available as open source in the way
that most people mean it, e.g. with a GPL, BSD-style or even
IBM's new CPL license. This would make Aldor easily available
to everyone.

But since Steven says he anticipates that it would take some
time to do this (The precise reason for the delay is not clear
since I thought the decision was basically just his to make.),
then he was telling me that he was willing to consider my
earlier request for a individual Aldor developer license to
me personally, as an interim measure. Aldor has been "freely"
available to researches in this manner on the basis of individual
requests since it was release to Steven Watt by Numerical
Algorithms Group in about 2001.

In another email I agreed to the individual license, but still
I have not heard from him about either the open source license
or the individual license.

Regards,
Bill Page.