William wrote: > MISSION STATEMENT: Provide as soon as possible a viable free > open source alternative to Maple, Mathematica, Magma, and Matlab.
When I read this mission statement, what doesn't come to mind is trying to convince people who are currently using these applications to switch to SAGE. My thought is that most users of these applications are perfectly happy with them. The way I view this mission statement is the same way the Ford Model T was a less expensive alternative to expensive American automobiles and the way the original Volkswagen "People's car" Beetle was a less expensive alternative to expensive German automobiles. Both of these automobiles were designed to allow the millions of people at that time who could not afford an automobile at all to finally afford one. The Beetle still holds the record for the highest production numbers for a single model, and the Model T holds second place. With this analogy, the M's will get you there in luxury but SAGE will get you there too. What I like about SAGE is it has the potential to allow orders of magnitude more people to get "there" than has been possible before. Here is a pie chart I created a while ago which shows this concept graphically: http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/tkosan/misc/sage_potential_target_audience.png It is my opinion that most of the people in the purple part of the pie chart will be notebook users. I have some experience with helping to maintain a small university computer network and I also have experience dealing with people who maintain high school networks. To me, the idea installing SAGE on individual lab machines is a maintenance nightmare, even if SAGE was windows-based and installed with the touch of a button. SAGE is huge, it takes a long time to install on a computer, and its upgrade cycle is so short that the IT people maintaining the lab machines will grow to dislike it immensely for having to install frequent updates. For this reason, and also those William stated about wanting to have all of one's worksheets available from anywhere, the only way I can see to provide SAGE to most of the people in the purple part of the chart is as a web service. What I like about the idea of having a windows port of SAGE is not to install it on clients (although many people still will, which is good too), but that windows-oriented IT people will be able to install it on their servers easier. I think the greatest percentage of users in the purple part of the chart are either high school students or college students. Here are my current thoughts on 2 strategies for making SAGE available to students. 1) US high schools (non-US high schools may be different). Problem: Getting the IT department in most school districts to install any kind of software is an exercise in frustration. Possible solution: Each school district has a Career Technology Center (these use to be called vocational schools) and most CTCs have an IT program that teaches students how to set up servers. The easiest way to make SAGE available to a whole school district is to get the district's IT class to set one up and maintain it. These IT classes have extra servers laying around and so finding one to devote to SAGE should be easy. 2) Universities. Problem: Getting the IT departments at most universities to install any kind of software is an exercise in frustration Possible solution: Have SAGE hosted at websites that are off campus. All mathematics applications need to be paid for one way or another, but finding funds at a university to purchase software (or a server to run it on) is often difficult. Even if funds are available, the red tape involved is often daunting. One way to pay for SAGE as a web service is to create a small pdf-format SAGE beginner's guide that SAGE web service providers can sell for perhaps $10. A teacher who wants to use SAGE in a class simply includes a given service provider's guide in the list of books that are required for the class. This gives most of the responsibility of whether or not to use SAGE in a class in the hands of the teacher instead of the IT department. Anyway, before SAGE "there" use to be thousands of dollars, a painful commercial license, and a painful installation process away. With SAGE as a web service, however, "there" has been reduced to the cost of a meal and 30 seconds away via a web browser. Ted --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
