The Maxima project, as regular group readers probably know by now, has
been working on the task of bringing back to life the Macsyma computer
algebra system as an open source program. Part of the functionality,
and a significant part of the usability of the system was the packages
created by researchers and coders to add abilities to Macsyma, much as
Mathematica packages are created today.
We are interested in locating any of these packages which a) still
exist b) are available under a license which is compatible with the
GPL and c) whose authors are willing to donate that code to the Maxima
effort. Note we cannot accept code written by employees that is
controlled by commercial entities unless the commercial entity
releases it - we need to have the permission of the copyright holder
before we can include any code in our share archives.
The purpose of this request is to try to preserve the effort that has
been put into Macsyma by various individuals over the years, so that
those efforts do not have to be recreated by another generation of
coders. As technology ages many of the original packages written may
become lost, and including them in a central archive as open code
ensures that they survive, and form a basis for new coding efforts in
the future, some as working code and all to show future coders how
Macsyma can be programmed. Documentation is also very much
appreciated.
If anyone has written such a package they would be interested in
contributing to the Maxima project, please contact me (Cliff Yapp) at
···········@REMOVETHISyahoo.com (obligatory spam dodge). Thank you.