On 7/9/07, Jay Belanger wrote:
"Bill Page" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: ... > On 7/8/07, you wrote: >> So I go away for an internet-free weekend, and what do I find when I come >> back? A fork of Axiom with its own name, and people on the mailgroup baring >> their teeth at each other in a most unseemly manner. So, so, fork away... >> but what I want to know is - where does this leave me, a common-or-garden >> user? > > Personally I think you should view this as a positive development. ... > so one way or another it's future is now more assured than it was > before. I think that's stretching things, to put it mildly. Resources are being divided, developers are being split. At least one person said they're leaving the Axiom project if there aren't enough developers, indicating that having developers leave (and anyone trying to work on two projects, even closely related ones, won't contribute as much as if they concentrated on one) can snowball.
Only one Axiom developer (Martin Rubey) has said publicly that he would probably quite the Axiom project but I am optimistic that in fact he will continue his interest in Axiom one way or the other. I do not see any more division now between the Axiom project and the FirCAS project than there already was within the Axiom project before the fork was officially declared.
I find the whole thing odd. I thought Tim was pretty clear from the beginning on what the goals of the Axiom project were, and it seems as if many in the community hopped on board but really didn't like the goals. I thought that the literate CAS approach was very exciting, and made it stand out quite a bit to me; a non-literate Axiom wouldn't have nearly the appeal.
Well speaking for just myself, I am no less interested now in literate programming and how this can be applied to CAS then I was when I started with the Axiom project. I just think that 5 years is long enough to spend on the current approach to conclude that it has been a failure. It appears that there are valid reasons why Knuth-style literate programming is not now a mainstream programming methodology and these reasons apply just as much to Axiom as any other project. But literate programming is not really the problem. Rather I think the problem as usual, is just the way in which decisions are (and are not) being made in the project.
> There is no reason to think that the Axiom project is going to > disappear I don't think so, either, but the chances that it will are greater than they were before.
Nonsense. Forks have occurred in many very successful open source projects. Regards, Bill Page _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
