This page will survey open source computer algebra systems (OSCAS's). Some of this may appear as columns in [[http://www.acm.org/sigsam/bulletin/|CCA]].

A ''computer algebra system'' (CAS) is a mathematical software package capable of symbolic manipulation.  The commercial CAS industry is big business. Few people know more about the CAS industry than {{{Darren McIntyre}}}, VP of Worldwide Sales at Maplesoft. He estimates the worldwide yearly expenditures on computer algebra (buying licenses, employee salaries, and so on) is at least $ 600 million. Clients include not just students and universities, but diverse industries who often find that a CAS is a convenient programming environment to model industrial problems.

For a list maintained by sigsam, see [[http://www.sigsam.org/Resources/Software.html|here]].

For the list by Oberwolfach, see [[https://orms.mfo.de/|here]].

Another list by the AMS [[http://www.mathontheweb.org/mathweb/mi-software.html|here]].

== The terrain ==
|| Axiom || [[http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php|BSD]] || http://axiom-developer.org ||
|| CADABRA || GPL || http://cadabra.phi-sci.com/ ||
|| DoCon || open source || http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/realworld/docon2.html||
|| FriCAS || [[http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php|BSD]] || http://fricas.sourceforge.net ||
|| GAP || GPL || https://www.gap-system.org ||
|| GIAC || GPL || https://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~parisse/giac.html ||
|| GINAC || GPL ||  https://www.ginac.de ||
|| GTYBALT || GPL || http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~stefanw/gtybalt/ ||
|| JScience || BSD || http://www.jscience.org/ ||
|| LiDIA || "open source" || https://github.com/mkoeppe/LiDIA/ ||
|| Macaulay2 ||  GPL ||  http://www.math.uiuc.edu/Macaulay2/ ||
|| Magnus ||   GPL ||   http://sourceforge.net/projects/magnus/ ||
|| MAS || "open source" || http://krum.rz.uni-mannheim.de/mas/ ||
|| Mathemagix ||  GPL || http://www.mathemagix.org/ ||
|| Mathomatic ||  LGPL || https://launchpad.net/mathomatic||
|| Maxima ||   GPL || http://maxima.sourceforge.net ||
|| NTL ||  GPL || https://www.shoup.net/ntl/ ||
|| Pari || GPL || https://pari.math.u-bordeaux.fr ||
|| SageMath ||  GPL || https://www.sagemath.org/ ||
|| Scilab ||  "open source" || https://www.scilab.org ||
|| Singular ||  GPL || https://www.singular.uni-kl.de ||
|| Symmetrica ||  public domain || http://www.algorithm.uni-bayreuth.de/en/research/SYMMETRICA/ ||
|| !SymPy || BSD || https://www.sympy.org/ ||
|| Yacas ||   GPL || http://yacas.sourceforge.net ||
Omitted is ''CAFE'' (Computer Algebra and Functional Equations),  a group writing a collection of CAS libraries  (see  [[http://www-sop.inria.fr/cafe/main-e.html|CAFE]]). They appear to be written in Aldor and Maple by (the late) Manuel Bronstein. I (=David Joyner) cannot determine the license (if any)  they are released under. (Note added by Marc Mezzarobba: most of them have since been released under free software licenses, as part of the [[https://github.com/aldorlang/aldor/tree/master/aldor/lib|Aldor library]] and/or of the [[https://gitlab.inria.fr/mezzarob/bronstein-codes|bronstein-codes]] archive.) I am also unsure if the  "open source" licenses of LiDIA, MAS, and Scilab are compatible with the above-mentioned open source definition. Several of these are under very active development and some of these are essentially dead. Two other sources of information are the Computer algebra handbook [[[#references|GKW]]] and the internet sites [[[#references|CA]]].

In any case, we see from this table that there are a lot of open source computer algebra systems out there. Some of these are special purpose (such as Symmetrica) and others are general purpose (such as Axiom).