[Axiom-developer] Axiom startup

[daly]

Paul Graham, a noted lisper, has an interesting web page up
about the reasons that keep people from forming a startup.
<http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html>

I've long pondered the possible paths to making Axiom into
something that lives and I've tried to gain various forms of
funding, all to no result.

I contacted the National Science Foundation. Their basic position
is that as long as there are commercial offerings they will not
fund research. Of course, if you've been listening to the latest
SymPy debate you'll see that Axiom is a world apart from other
computer algebra systems. And, in that realm, there are no commercial
offerings. But, from the outside, a CAS is a CAS is a CAS so the NSF
doesn't consider this a worthwhile research project.

Paul's essay tweeked my long-term vision nerve yet again, even as I
wrestle with the mundane release issues. I don't see Axiom on a path
for "commercial success" but rather a path of "research success"; a
long term, large-science kind of project; the big-ticket physics
project of computational mathematics. In the long term I would like
to see Axiom as a source of thesis work, as a central pillar of a
research institute, as a base for computational mathematics. 

RISC-Linz, under Buchberger, made money by focusing on gaining
industry support for solving real-world problems at his institute.
I think such a path could be very lucrative, certainly enough to
support a group of full time people who can solve real industry
problems while generating new computational mathematics.

Of course, it's a long, slow, and very poverty-laden path between
here and such an institute. And clearly Paul is not in that kind
of an investment chain.

But he has again "raised an ache" for doing Axiom full time.

Sigh.

Tim