dropping support for kash? (RFC)

[Dima Pasechnik]

kash3 is an old closed-source program, to which Sage provides
interfaces for doing computations of Galois groups of number fields,
and integer factorization.

It is only available in form of the binary downloads, dated back to
2008 or even earlier.
Cf. https://www.kantmath.de/download.shtml

We very much doubt any current or future user of Sage has any use for it.
Integer factorization isn't something which is not covered in Sage
otherwise, and its Galois
group computations capabilities are now covered by GAP.
See https://github.com/sagemath/sage/issues/42523 and
https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/42524

If there are no objections by the end of the week, we'll proceed to remove it.

Dima

[Nils Bruin]

Indeed. KASH is only of historical importance at this point.

[Yanshu Wang]

I never used KASH3 and have no objections. I heard that it is powerful in algebraic number theory and magma's number field module is based on it (https://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/magma/handbook/text/381). I don't know if pari can replace it.

Anyways, I made a web port of KASH3: https://wangyenshu.github.io/KASH3-in-Browser/. I hope that will be useful if one wants to run some KASH3 code without installing it.

[Yanshu Wang]

Maybe the interface to MuPAD should be dropped as well. MuPAD has been withdrawn as a standalone software product. And some features (like notebook) of mupad in matlab has been removed.

I happened to find the mupad binary:

https://vetusware.com/download/MuPAD%20pro%203.11%203.1/?id=18845

https://vetusware.com/download/mupad-3.2.0-3-linux-i386%203.2.0-3/?id=18846

But it is a pro trial version and I do not have the license key. I heard that there is a free "MuPAD Light" version. But I cannot find it anywhere in the internet.