[Axiom-developer] Fricas

[daly]

> Much better for Axiom would be if we get Waldek back into the boat.
> Isn't that simple? Cooperation, not separation.

There has been no discussion against Waldek participating in Axiom.
I, for one, would welcome his participation at any time. I participate
in a couple computer algebra systems and a few other projects. At no
time is this a personal issue.  At no time have I ever claimed that
Waldek is not welcome.

That said, it IS a project issue. Deciding to fork a project risks
"bringing confusion to the marketplace". The separation of projects
needs to be clear and absolute so people clearly know what they mean
when they say "Axiom" and "FriCAS". Witness CMUCL vs SBCL. Forking a
project is clearly an act of separation, not cooperation. 

I know it appears that I'm being divisive, deliberately creating
dissention and discord. However, except for replying to personal
attacks I've limited my discussion to the question of what it means to
participate in a project. 

I am trying to make the point that Axiom is a well-defined thing. 
Prior to Bill's wiki there was an Axiom website I maintained. See:
<http://axiom.axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/faq.html>
It had a list of goals, some of which have been abandoned, some of
which failed, some of which are still relevant. See:
<http://axiom.axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/currentstate.html>
It has not been updated since Oct, 2004 which is when the wiki started.







There are certain standards about how one contributes to an open
source project. Certain behaviors, such as promoting a branch above
the main distribution or the development trunk are NOT cooperative
behaviors. Creating public branches without posting trunk diffs is not
cooperative behavior.  Posting patches to another project are
off-topic for a mailing list. Ad-hominem attacks (attacking the
speaker rather than the point) are off-topic.  Delaying and derailing
the promotion of the development version to the distribution version
is non-cooperative behavior.

I get the impression that most people have never participated in an
open source project before. The behaviors I've seen and complained
about are obviously not aimed at participation or cooperation.  These
things feel so painfully obvious to me. I would never consider doing
some of the behaviors I've watched here, on a project like Fedora,
SBCL, binutils, or other projects I follow. 

Cooperation, not separation, applies to everyone on the project.

Tim