(This is sort of the middle of a discussion that ties in with another discussion on sage-devel, so I've cc'd sage-devel...)
On 8/4/07, Emil Volcheck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > William, David, > > I see this development as an evolutionary process. NAG is unwilling > at this time to make Aldor open source in an OSI-compatible way, but > there's the possibility of NAG changing their mind. I hope so, though I'm dubious. They might not want to open source the code because they want to keep open the option of licensing the code (for profit) for commercial use. If they make the code OSI-approved, they think (probably correctly) that their commercial options for that same code are greatly limited, which directly conflicts with their interests as a company. > If Aldor were to remain closed source, I agree with you both that it > would slowly die, but the opposite is happening. The source is being > made publicly available. That's very powerful, because Aldor is good > technology. By allowing unrestricted use for academic and government > sectors, NAG is giving free access to those who would use it and > develop it the most. By way of comparison, I think SAGE, Magma, and > GAP are developed mostly in the academic sector. A substantial part of SAGE, perhaps half of it, consists of Python and numerical and scientific computing tools such as numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, etc., and much of that work is done by people at companies and labs (e.g., Enthought, TechX, etc.). > By allowing > noncommercial use, NAG gives a scientist the ability to run code and > verify claims of other researchers using Aldor. This is not something > you can do with closed source software like Mathematica. It is probably better than Mathematica. However, I personally would not even look at Aldor, because if I read the source code of Aldor, then implement the same thing in an open source program (e.g., SAGE), I will be violating the license agreement for Aldor (since SAGE can be used commercially, which is allowed by the GPL). Reading Aldor's source and writing something based on it is creating a derivative work. In a sense, the situation with Aldor will be not much different than the current situation with Maple, where much of the source of functions can be inspected, but only under a very restrictive license. > There are some very successful projects that have publicly available > source with noncommercial restrictions. For instance, MySQL and Qt > (the library underlying KDE) are both extremely successful! Unfortunately you're examples actually rebut your point, since both your examples are wrong -- MySQL and Qt are licensed under an OSI approved license without a "noncommercial restriction". Qt initially had such a restriction long ago, which is *precisely* what led to the Gnome project, but the issues were resolved a few years ago when Qt was GPL'd. Similarly MySQL is also GPL'd. The GPL is *not* a "noncommercial restriction". MySQL and Qt do also license there code under a completely different non-GPL license which they sell to people who want to include Qt or MySQL in closed source software. For example, I'm writing this email in Parallels Virtual Machine on a mac, which uses the non-GPL commercial version of the Qt library for its GUI. > So the > fact that Aldor is not now OSI-compatible open source is not necessarily > fatal. Remember also that Aldor is a language, rather than an entire > system. For a long time, GPL software like emacs was developed > using closed source commercial C compilers. Until recently, > Java was proprietary and closed source, but people still developed > open source software using Java. Developers can > and should create GPL-software in Aldor. I hope that people > wouldn't shun such code. For instance, Manuel Bronstein's > substantial libraries are being released as open source, although > I don't know what license. I would shun such code exactly like I shun Magma code, because a person can't run it without using the proprietary interpreter/compiler. David is explaining what is actually happening with Axiom/FriCAS developers. There are genuine reasons for it. With the success of GNU / Linux / Firefox / Apache / GCC / etc. many people, especially the sorts of people who will put substantial effort into open source software development, have realized that they really can build a future in which they can do the computing they really care about using entirely free software. -- William > On Sat, Aug 04, 2007 at 04:29:05PM -0700, William Stein wrote: > > On 8/4/07, David Joyner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Based on what I've read on the axiom developers list, > > > I think because of NAG's (very unfortunate, IMHO) decision, > > > Axiom (and FriCAS) will now be moving away from Aldor. > > > Therefore, I think it will be a waste of time for SAGE to distribute > > > Aldor. NAG lead people on (or let people hope) that > > > Aldor would be open source. I predict Aldor will, thanks to > > > NAG, slowly die. > > > > > > > Just to add agreement to that, I have no interest in distributing > > any non-open source code, as defined by the Open Source Initiative. > > David's probably right about the future of Aldor... > > > > I'm not certain whether SAGE is allowed to include Aldor as a separate > module, in accordance with GPL restrictions. Even if it could, > you are perfectly within your rights to send a message to NAG > by not including it. However, it's OK to download it remotely, > so SAGE could still offer support to Aldor users in that way. > > I'm optimistic about the future of Aldor, because making the > source public ensures that it can't be killed by anyone through > neglect. > > --Emil > > > -- > Emil Volcheck > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://acm.org/~volcheck > -- William Stein Associate Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://www.williamstein.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
