I strongly support the idea of having a site listing Maple bugs as
posted by Vladimir Bondarenko and commenetd on by Bertfried Fauser, but
equally, if not not more importantly, I see a need for posting bug fixes
as soon as they become available. It would be great if these bug fixes
were in some way validated or, for the sake of a better word, certified
or officially supported by Maple Waterloo, and if these bug fixes were
included in Maple distributed patches. The issue of copyright goes both
ways, however: once a bug fix has been found and tested, it should be
listed with a copyright notice giving the names of it authors: That is,
Maple should not consider the fix as its own.

Maple and "maple expert groups" need to find a way to quickly:

1. Post the information about the bug once its presence has been
confirmed, sort of like a description of a computer virus in a virus
encyclopedia: ranking of the severity, as detailed as possible
description of how it manifests itself, in which Maple versions, under
which platform(s), etc. It would be VERY desirable if some automatic
listing of procedures that use the procedure or a Maple construct with
the bug were also possible to be quickly generated and included so that
anyone who works on the bug fix could quickly test the fix to see if it
works properly in these affected procedures. Admittedly, such list could
be long, but I guess that is necessary.

2. Come up with a template for a mutual arrangement that would be
acceptable to both groups, Waterloo Maple and "maple experts" by means
of which copyright for the bug stayed (?) with their authors and were
clearly listed in the fix under 'copyrights' option. At least to me, a
satisfactory solution would be to have the author's name listed in the
software and/or on a web page, but, since Maple is a commercial product
unlike linux to have Maple work out some form of renumeration for the
author, either monetary and/or in the form of free Maple product and/or
a direct line of communication with a software engineer at Waterloo
Maple who would be devoted to receiving bug reports, verifyng their
presence and characteristics, and then developing Maple's own fix or
testing the fix submitted by a "maple expert".

Unfortunately as pointed out by Bertfried, Waterloo Maple needs to be
really responsive to the issues involved and get this process going: At
present I am not aware of any sort of arrangements as discussed in #2 above.

Rafal Ablamowicz
rablamowicz@...