oh well. I'll try to respond civilly.
<.. big snip..> > > > [RJF] I really don't care about Magma. I know that some mathematicians do. > > This rather vague statement I think might signal a different between > philosophies. I did not mean to be vague. I know that some mathematicians want to do the calculations that are enabled by Magma. So far as I can tell, I don't. > Mathematicians I think agree that applications are great but that to > create good and useful mathematics often starts by understanding an exploiting > general mathematical principles. You and many others start with a real-world > problem and try to solve it. Both approaches have their merits. This > reminds me of a > story I read in which the Queen of England asked Maxwell what good > electricity was > (which has just been discovered at the time). He replied, "Your > majesty, what good > is a baby?" May or may not be a true story but I think illustrates the > difference in > philosophies. As long as we are posting stories, here's a riddle: Question: What is the difference between a graduate student in pure mathematics and a graduate student in theology? Answer: The theology student has a career path after graduation. Actually I think that one of the flaws in computer algebra system design is that they are frequently technology driven, rather than application driven or driven by what you seem to think are "general principles". What does this mean? technology driven means (for example) I know how to write an algorithm to do X so I will include it in my program. Or computers have 2 or 3 or 4 processors. I know how to make algorithm X run in parallel. so I will rewrite it. If you look at recent conference or journal articles in symbolic math, you will see many papers solving problems that no one else knew existed. "general principles" probably means that it fits into the standard structure of (say) modern algebra, or perhaps geometry, or some basic logical foundational combinatorial computation. Unfortunately, there tends to be a large gap between (say) algebra and applications using (say) analysis. Viewing CAS from the general principles perspective means that to do something practical you must build tools to reduce everything you want to compute to something like polynomials or linear algebra. That means that regardless of how well you implement polynomials, you haven't solved the analysis problem, or even improved the prospect of solving analysis problems. "application driven" has its problematical aspects too. Some people are happy with programs that sometimes give the wrong answers, because "any physicist [etc] would check the answer from a computer to make sure it made sense, anyway". Yet, the inspiration from applications can be helpful. I suppose "applications to pure mathematics" can be helpful to some people, even though it sounds like a contradiction in terms to me. > > > > > Well, to say that Sage uniquely provides a viable free (etc) > > alternative to Mathematica, > > and then to admit that Sage calls Maxima, a viable free (etc) program > > as the principal alternative to Mathematica, > > suggests that there is a certain insincerity to the claim that Sage is > > UNIQUE in providing that alternative.. free etc. > > > After all, Maxima is already free, open-source etc, and just as much > > an alternative. > > It seems to me that this discussion can be summarized that you don't like > the statement that one of SAGE's goals is to be a " viable free (etc) > alternative to Mathematica, ...". That is fine. It is your opinion. William > Stein likes that statement. You don't. He explained why he likes it and > you've explained why you don't. However, it seems to be more of an > argument over marketing hype rather than SAGE development, isn't it? I agree entirely with your assessment! That is, I think it is marketing hype to claim that SAGE, given its current trajectory, is now or will ever be an alternative to Mathematica (as, say, Octave might be an alternative to Matlab). And to the extent that it is similar to Mathematica in (say) symbolic integration, it is because it simply uses another program, also available free, open-source etc, written by people who, for the most part, never heard of SAGE. > Or are you trying to point out a specific decision of the SAGE development > team > that you think is both (a) based on this goal, (b) a bad decision? > If you are saying something to the effect "I think you should spend > more time on X than Y" then I am missing the point and would be interested > in a clarification. No, I think the marketing hype assessment is the key. Though if in fact the SAGE development team truly WANTS to reverse-engineer Mathematica, they need a better plan than maybe trying to hire a high school student for the summer. And probably a lawyer. < more snip.. > > > RJF: Instead of standing on Axiom's shoulders, you stand on its toes. This > > is, from a technical standpoint, > > simply shameful. > > I hope that is perfectly clear now. > > I'm not sure what you mean by "reject Axiom". > > (a) If by Axiom, you mean Tim Daly's fork, then the statement "runs > nearly everywhere" is AFAIK misleading. Well, it is true I have not tried to run it everywhere. But I thought it ran on Mac, Linux, and (for me) on Windows. I never tried to compile Axiom myself, and I do not deem "runs everywhere" to mean "compiles everywhere". My impression is that the latter claim is what makes Axiom problematical for SAGE, but I never really got a confirmation of that. > (b) If by Axiom you mean Fricas or OpenAxiom then those are relatively > recent and the decision to use Maxima over Axiom was made before their > creation. I thought these too would be problematical by the Design Principle quoted earlier, regarding building on a normal person's computer... > (c) In any case, rejecting Axiom is not how I would characterize things > and we are extremely grateful to Bill Page for helping Fricas work with > SAGE. Possibly with more work, Axiom would be part of SAGE, but that > is a SAGE community decision. I guess that from my perspective it indeed looks like you have rejected Axiom: it is a system with obvious merits, and it is not in SAGE. If I'm part of the community, given my current understanding of the situation, my vote is to allow Axiom and reject (or change) your Design Principle. > (d) I personally think Axiom+forks is a great piece of software. So the SAGE pages, or your home page should somewhere say "download Sage and then download Fricas" and you will have a great piece of software. And maybe give some more instructions or details as needed. > > > >> > * Instead of finding a remedy to some bug in Maxima or Axiom, or add > >> > features that provide value beyond that available in Maple > >> or Mathematica, > >> > or Magma or Matlab, staff will be devoted to fulfilling an > >> essentially > >> > political statement about free speech. > > >> Naw. Free speech has nothing to do with it. It's about > >> proof: you can't prove a result with Mathematica, since one > >> can't readily inspect the source. > > > This is simply naive bullshit. > > You assume that seeing the source code is either necessary or > > sufficient for a proof. Can you prove that? > > > Read the paper by Demillon,Lipson, Perlis, about proofs and social > > processes. > > I thnk this is a misunderstanding. I've heard your arguments before and I > think > I know what Tom is trying to say. It is simply that research and development > of > mathematical algorithms, at least in the academic community, is much easier if > the code is FOSS as opposed to proprietary. Well, if Tom meant that it is easier to extend open source programs, he would not have gotten that reaction from me. I think his words speak clearly enough about proofs. As far as research being much easier with free and open source, that is itself a weak argument too, if you then make a rule that you cannot do research unless.... You can compile a program with a proprietary C compiler and if you wish, look at the assembler. And why an open source compiler would have to be free, as opposed to copyrighted I cannot see from an academic argument. Do you refuse to read journals that charge for subscriptions? It is marginally easier to read articles if you have free access to them, but at least for me, I can get library access on my computer after typing in a password, so it is almost as easy, and has the added benefit that I am getting the actual article, not some "author's preprint". Do you refuse to join scientific societies that charge dues? I pay dues. > Even if the code is "public" but not > FOSS, then that can potentially cause problems since copyright laws > can restrict > distributing modifications. Though I am not a lawyer, my understanding is that theorems and algorithms cannot be copyrighted. I wonder about academic research that somehow requires that you appropriate without payment or permission someone else's intellectual property. GPL and such is, in my opinion, a mixed blessing. I personally find GPL to be too restrictive, but certainly do not want to discuss it here. And I have occasionally signed non-disclosure agreements that have had great benefits to research. > > I think his point has nothing to do with the issues discussed in the paper > you cited (not that the paper isn't interesting to read, but it just isn't > very relevant). Well, maybe Tom should say what he meant, and comment on whether the paper is relevant to his point. Regards RJF --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
