On Dec 21, 10:49 pm, "William Stein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Wow, this is quite a thread! Here's the current version of the evolving
> mission statement I have for Sage:
>
> MISSION STATEMENT: Povide as soon as possible a viable free
> open source alternative to Maple, Mathematica, Magma, and Matlab.
>
> Since all of the above Ma* programs run well on MS Windows, that Sage
> should have very good support for people using MS Windows is definitely
> a critical part of the mission of Sage. Period. But what this "support"
> actually means is unclear, and is what is causing all the discussion in
> this thread.
>
> Harald's remark: "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..."
> touched this off. Maybe this discussion has a lot do with how
> one views software.?
>
> Should we view Sage primarily as software in the traditional sense
> of a local binary install with a GUI, or as software in the more
> web-based community sense? I view Sage as being more
> of the latter rather than the former.
> For me, gmail provides a viable alternative to Opera mail,
> kmail or Mail.app -- I used to use those programs, but now I do all
> my email in gmail. Given the impressive success of browser-based
> community software in recent years, it is not a crazy to think
> Sage could provide a useful alternative using a similar approach.
>
Well, that is how you see Sage, but having a local development
environment is something I would see happening sooner or later. Sage
should work in a way the users wants it to and for many people that
means a local install. I never use the notebook since I don't like to
use web applications for any serious work. Many people disagree with
me on that one, but I don't care ;)
> For example, last night I had a long email discussion with the UW sysadmins,
> computing committee, etc., who initially wanted to roll out Sage on all the
> Windows PC's in the department. After a lot of discussion, it became clear
> that it would be better for everybody involved if we setup an
> internal UW math faculty-only Sage notebook server. Then faculty can
> easily share worksheets, they can use all the commercial software on
> the central server from sage (Mathematica license issues aside), upgrades
> are very easy, and -- most importantly -- they can easily use exactly the
> same sage worksheets from at home, when traveling, etc., as they do
> from on campus.
>
> That said, it is clear that a *lot* of people both want and need to download
> Sage and run it on Windows machines -- the sage-vmware download is
> more popular than all the other download types, and there are cases
> like John Voight where running Sage on a bunch of Windows PC's in a lab
> is very useful for distributed computation. I think 99% of these people
> could care less how we package sage -- natively, via cygwin, via
> virtualization,
> etc. -- mainly what they care about is whether or not it Just Works, whether
> or
> not the install process is easy, and disk space issues. Regarding disk space,
> keep in mind that a normal install of Mathematica is 1.1GB, so to provide
> a viable alternative, keeping with 1GB of disk space usage is OK.
Sure, it works today, but I think virtualization on PCs is still an in-
mature technology. It has a pretty big performance impact (a non-issue
for the casual user), but certainly an issue for people like John when
he is using the Lab on the weekend and nights to do computations. But
a lot of people do not have the expertise to get the VMware image to
run, while they certainly can click on some installer and run it. I
see the VMWare image as another delivery vehicle for Sage on Windows,
but I don't think it satisfies the needs of 99% of potential Sage on
Windows users out there.
> So in evaluating which approach we take with Sage to MS Windows,
> we should focus mainly on how the end result will work, rather than anything
> about the underlying technology. I.e., if via virtualization one can
> roll something
> out that works better than a native port, then virtualization wins; if not,
> then
> a native port wins. Simple as that. As far as strategy goes, I
> think the best
> plan is:
>
> (1) Create a usable virtualization method to run Sage on Windows (done)
> (2) Create a really good virtualization method to run Sage on Windows
> (3) Earn many Sage under MS windows users.
> (4) Use 3 to fund hiring a couple programmers full time to make a much
> better way to run Sage on Windows (whatever that turns out to be).
>
> If there were a million devoted users of Sage on windows via some sweet
> virtualization approach, I bet we could easily get funding to hire a
> few programmers to
> work on improving usability of Sage in a windows environment.
Having more open source mathematical code run natively on Windows
would be a side benefit of the port. And as the download number for
maxima clearly show that is where the majority of the users are. If
maxima were to offer a VMWare image only for Windows do you still
think that the Windows download would still be 10 times the number of
the rest of the downloads combined? I don't think so.
>
> Since Sage is almost completely a volunteer project, I hope developers will
> do what excites them most. Just do it very very well. Oh, and make sure
> your
> code is readable since odds are you might be way too busy to work on Sage
> in a few months!
>
Well, since I have nothing better to do I will certainly spend the
next two weeks on making a first step in the direction of the native
Windows port and might even revive the Cygwin build. So far no linker
has successfully stood in my way forever, and I will break its
resistance to linking a dynamic libSingular!
> -- William
Cheers,
Michael
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