[Axiom-developer] Funding

[daly]

Martin,

> the world does not only consist of the U.S.

True. But I believe you'll find the same response from FWF or INRIA.

I'd hope to be proven wrong. Do you have a counter-example that shows
that an open source project that is not government, company, or
university based has been funded? Can you tell me how they set up
their project to handle the grant?

Can I, as a U.S. national, propose research questions to FWF or INRIA?
The NSF requires that you have a social security number in order to
apply. Indeed, your social security number IS your userid.

Actually, I'd be delighted to see anyone in any country get research
funded that used Axiom. Axiom has nothing to do with the U.S. But I
naturally come in contact with my own country's funding organizations.
My only direct contact with INRIA was years ago while Axiom was still
"in the box" and I was still claiming that it would be freely released.



> all funds support "research"

I've discussed funding to support "provisos", to explore its application
to such ideas as:

  * an interval-based "such that" facility that would replace the
    global "assume" (my PhD thesis topic)
  * a means of naturally-parallel computation to take advantage of
    multicore architectures (passed on the SUN Microsystems)
  * a means of handling multiple branch-cut computations
  * a means of handling variable-precision variables based on
    stream-based provisos

I've asked for funding to support "indefinites" to answer the question

  * if M is a matrix and n is an unknown, what is the symbolic matrix
    entry M_{i,j} of the matrix M^n
  
I've discussed funding to support the application of ACL2 to 
proving the algorithms in the Axiom algebraic hierarchy correct.

I've asked for NIST funding to support the Computer Algebra Test Suite
(CATS), which is a symbolic form of the numeric standards. Indeed, at
this time the CATS effort most naturally fits into the SAGE framework.




These are some of the topics that have not gotten any traction
in an open source framework. I was one of the principle investigators
on an NSF grant for the "indefinites" idea but that was funded thru
the university, not thru open source Axiom. So I'm intimately familiar
with the grant requirements.

Any one of these topics would represent fundamental research.

I still maintain that no governmental funding organization in any
country will accept a grant proposal from a project that is not
connected to a "funding source", that is, not connected to a company
or a university. SAGE is embedded in a university as is (was?) MuPad.
The 100-ish open source algebra projects I collected for the Rosetta
project were all university based.

It is not the lack of fundamental research questions which limits
funding. Provisos, Indefinites, ACL2-Axiom proofs, etc are fundamental
research questions.



There is the hope that some company might fund an open source project
with a grant. IBM, the company that fathered Axiom might be a natural
source. I have not explored this funding idea.

Alternatively RISC might be able to handle the money for grant funding
and use it to "subgrant" to Axiom. I have not explored this funding idea.


Tim