What you should have told them was that SAGE is going to eat their lunch, then spun on your heels, and walked out.
Just kidding. On Aug 9, 2:41 am, "William Stein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I substantially updated the 1-hour SAGE colloquium-style talk I posted earlier > today (thanks for the feedback). The slides (sfu.pdf) and worksheet are > at > http://sage.math.washington.edu/tmp/sfu/ > > --- > > The talk went very well. This was at one of the Maple development centers, > the very nice person who invited me (Michael Monogan) was one of the people > who > started Maple in the early 1980s, and I had the impression that almost > everybody in the > room used and loved Maple. So the audience reactions and questions at the end > were interesting. > > * There were several older people who were involved with Maple since > the early days, > who asked some interesting questions: > > * Will SAGE be around in 10 years? > (Several people in the audience responded immediately > -- "yes", how could > it not be, it is hard to kill GPL'd programs.) > > * How is it possible that SAGE can exist in the future > given all the *tedious* work > that must be done -- e.g., documentation, automated > testing, making > SAGE available to people, etc.?? > (I answered that since specific work on SAGE is voluntary, > SAGE developers almost only do work on SAGE > that actually interests and excites them; the > questioner just shook > her head in utter disbelief and said it wasn't > possible. I also pointed > out that what some consider boring tedium -- e.g., > writing the tutorial -- > others really like doing -- e.g., David Joyner really > loves writing!) > > * Another person explained why he thought that SAGE would almost > certainly become commercial within a few years, and that my > dream > of having something free and open source in the long run is > hence > doomed. He sited many examples to back this up of actual > systems > like Maple, Maxima, Mupad, etc., that used to be free but > became > commercial out of necessity. > I explained that SAGE becoming commercial only (like Maple) > is totally impossible because of the GPL and that the > copyright of > SAGE and its components is owned by hundreds of people. > > Most of the audience consisted of students (many advanced > undergrads, some in > applied math and combinatorics), and they were uniformly enthusiastic about > SAGE, the notebook interface, and *JSMATH* (which they love). > > My impression repeatedly, is that with SAGE it is best to focus as much > as possible on young people and new users, and not worry much about > old fogies. Older people have repeatedly seen generations of failures > with free math software, so I think some of them might be somewhat > jaded. > > -- William > > -- > William Stein > Associate Professor of Mathematics > University of Washingtonhttp://www.williamstein.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. 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?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
