[Axiom-developer] Re: update on Aldor

[C Y]

--- Bill Page <address@hidden> wrote:

> On October 21, 2006 12:46 PM CY wrote:
> > 
> > Very interesting!  Good overview.  Thanks for taking the time 
> > to do this talk.
> >
> 
> Thanks. Maybe we should start planning the next Axiom meeting real
> soon. I would love to have a chance to work on Axiom in an intensive
> coding sprint such as was organized for Sage Days. I think it was
> very effective.

That would be fun.  Maybe we could do it in Pittsburgh :-).  Europe
seems to be the more popular forum these days though.  Where is the
most logical place, given the geographic distribution of Axiom
developers?
  
> > I haven't haven't anything about Aldor since the Aldor-l list 
> > discussion some months back, and that mostly concerned how to
> > handle the situation of Aldor not being released.
> > 
> > Any updates available or forthcoming on that subject?
> 
> I have not heard anything at all concerning making Aldor open source
> despite the publicly stated positive intentions of the principal
> people involved, many months ago. I think this reflects very badly
> on them, given how important this is to the future of Axiom. At this
> point in time I am no longer very optimistic that this is really
> going to happen. :-( Anything that anyone can do to re-energize this
> effort, e.g. contact Steven Watt again and offer help with making
> Aldor open source, would be greatly appreciated by all.

Perhaps, as an alternative, we could ask not for the code but simply
for the manual/documentation to be released as Modified BSD licensed
work?   We don't need to use the Aldor name, but if we could at least
start with those descriptions of the language and combine/expand them
with a re-done/spruced up SPAD compiler to make a literate document it
would be a big help.  The documentation is considerably more restricted
than even the current Aldor distribution - this is the statement at the
beginning of the Aldor compiler user guide:

Aldor User Guide
c2000 The Numerical Algorithms Group Limited. c
2002 Aldor.org.
All rights reserved. No part of this Manual may be reproduced,
transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, translated into any language
or computer language or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Ouch.  If we want to create a proper specification for Axiom's language
of choice (personally I feel we need to) it would help to be able to
build on Aldor's pre-existing documentation.  Would that be easier than
releasing the code?

Cheers,
CY

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