On Dec 21, 11:56 am, harald schilly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Dec 20, 9:39 pm, "Ondrej Certik" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > If Michael and others succeed in a native Windows port, needing just > > couple hundreds MB, then Sage > > will be a killer app. >
Hi, > But please don't forget, sage is about open source - and windows is > the complete opposite. [begin rant] Well, we support OSX, too, and that isn't exactly Open Source either. While Apple itself is somewhat more friendly to the Open Source idea than Microsoft on the software side you shouldn't forget that Apple is the company which brought you DRM and "unprotected" tracks which just happen to contain a number that tracks individual users via iTunes. The iPod isn't exactly a poster child for openness, either. I could bash Apple for another couple paragraphs, but I am sure you get my point. There are different opinions about what Open Source constitutes, but a lot of people like William and me think for example that Firefox has done more for the Open Source idea to the layperson than Linux ever will. I am a huge supporter of Linux and Open Source in general, having first installed Linux from a set of roughly 50 floppy discs pulled over many nights via a 14.4KB download link in the early to mid nineties and running it as my primary desktop OS to this day. Having cross platform applications is a big plus, but more on that below. What is the point in telling people not to use Windows, but to lock them into Linux or OSX on the other hand? > Supporting all modules native for win32 is > impossible, drains off a lot of worktime and using cygwin as an > intermediate solution makes it slow, besides additional constant > work! Cygwin is certainly a crutch, but a native port has many advantages, namely 64 bit support. Just ask for example the Singular team if they want a 64 bit native port of their application using MSVC. I can assure you that they would be quite happy if somebody did the work. If things work out as planned on my end I will certainly try to make that happen. In the end we will all win if Sage and its components work well on *all* operating systems. > So i would suggest an additional workstation and run the linux version > and access it over the local network. Therefore nobody has to install > an application in windows and the entry level is 0. The vast majority of users on the desktop use Windows and do not have access to Linux or OSX. Probably most of them don't even want to switch. The VMWare image to run Sage on Windows is fine for many users, but many people will not use it because they lack the skill to even set up networking and run a VMWare machine. Windows has excelled at being good enough, and Microsoft will be *the* dominating desktop operating system for easily the next decade. While the install base of Linux is growing quicker in relative terms the absolute increase of Windows desktops each year *dwarfs* the Linux desktop install base. So while some people do extrapolate those exponential growth rates for the Linux desktops a couple years into the future the server market has clearly shown that those exponential growth rates fairly quickly turn into an linear increase fairly quickly. So world domination for Linux on the Desktop any time soon? I don't think so. I like to point out that extrapolation without understanding the situation is very dangerous. By that measure the Women's world record for the 100 meter dash will be lower than the Men's record by the middle of this century assuming linear extrapolation of the performance over the last two decades or so. One can easily see that this is unlikely to happen and the main reason behind the relative better improvements on that particular benchmark is either a professionalization of Women's field & track [in relative terms] or that doping with steroids has a larger affect on Women in that particular discipline. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. But eventually the improvements on the Women's side will level off just like it happened for the Men. And even today it is in my not so humble opinion impossible to lower that record for either sex without massive doping, but I don't want to rant on about that topic here. To get somewhat closer to on-topic again: Another target group for Sage is the general educational sector [by which I mean high schools and non-major math college education, not professional mathematicians, graduate students in math and so on] which is primarily Windows and while a Sage notebook server certainly make sense in that context [a bunch of clients working on a powerful central server] many people will not use Sage because it isn't a native Windows installation with either a MSI installer or some executable to click on and install. There are still loads of people out there, especially in the "management" layer, who think that Microsoft offers the better deal because you have somebody to point the finger at if anything goes wrong. Obviously after actually reading the EULA those people should be embarrassed, but that is besides the point. And many shops run homogeneous networks to keep costs down and limit the areas where they need expertise. I don't think those are valid points, but we have to work with the situations that is often called "reality", not what the situation we would like to be in. We do not have a 30 year horizon, we want to compete *now* and to do that successfully we need a native port, the sooner the better. As mentioned above I think that cross platform code makes Open Source independent of the underlying operating system which is much more important than a somewhat purist opinion that excludes the majority of the target audience just because they "haven't seen the light yet." This rant is not intended to flame you, I am just sick and tired of people like Fefe who think that everybody needs to switch to a pure Open Source OS like Linux [if you want to be amused ask the OpenBSD people people whether they think Linux is truly free] to be eligible to run Open Source applications. Open Source *in my book* is about *choice* and if one wants to run Sage natively instead any of the big Ms on Windows more power to that person. That choice to run Sage on Windows is way more important *in my book* than some ill guided arguments that catering to the "evil M$ empire" [please note that I consider the use of "M$" childish and again: you didn't express that position] will stop people from starting to use Linux because they can use all those cool Open Source applications like Firefox on Windows. The vast majority of users will finally see that Open Source works because of Firefox, not be kept on Windows because they can use it there. They may switch, they may not switch, but at least they might have learned something in the process. In the end feel free to disagree with me, and many people certainly do. Me spending my time on a native Windows port doesn't hurt anybody out there, except that there is some cost of opportunity since I didn't spend my time on fixing some bug in Sage I could have worked on in that time. But it is my experience that porting code exposes bugs that will hit you sooner or later on the platform you already run on. I have been porting Software to and from Windows, OSX, Linux, Solaris, HPUX and so on for many years now and in my experience those ports always increase the quality of the code.[end rant] > h Cheers, Michael --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] 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/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
