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I don't understand open source

news.ycombinator.com

11–12 of 12 posts

Re: I don't understand open source

#11

There are several fallacies in your argument. You assume that software cannot exist without some corporations. Open source is almost like "free" information and content on the Internet. Any kid or adult can start a project. They can just wake up and start coding. Many tools are free and available so they decide to start coding on their own time. Nothing should stop the coder from starting a project. And there are som…

"There are several fallacies in your argument."

There are only questions. There isn't an argument at all, let alone a fallacious one.

Re: I don't understand open source

#12
Axiom costs several thousand dollars a year. I fund it. The main contributors are academic mathematicians since Axiom is a computer algebra system. I have tried to get funding from IBM, RedHat, the NSF, and several other funding sources. Funds would be used to run a conference, pay for speaker fees, hackathons, travel costs, and server costs. None of the funds would be for actual code. So far I have not found any funding source.

Axiom used to be proprietary. It was a commercial competitor to Mathematica and Maple, one of "the big 3". It could be proprietary again as it is licensed under BSD. Axiom contains world-class algorithms written by the people who invented them. It is truly a valuable collection of intellectual excellence. This is what motivates me to continue to support and develop it.

Tim Daly Axiom Lead Developer http://axiom-developer.org

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