On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 9:59 AM, rjf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> oh well. I'll try to respond civilly.
Because you've responded mostly civilly I'll respond civilly as well
to your civil questions.
> 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).
The statement "The goal of the Sage project is to provide a free open
source viable alternative to Maple, Mathematica, Matlab, and Magma"
is not marketing hype. It is not a claim that Sage is now such an alternative,
it's not a claim that Sage will ever be such an alternative, and it's
not a claim
that Sage is or will be the unique such alternative. It is simply the
*goal* of the
Sage project. The purpose of this goal is to focus the direction of the
project, and help us decide what we should and shouldn't do.
> 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.
The Sage package inclusion procedure is described here:
http://wiki.sagemath.org/spkg/InclusionProcedure
>> (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.
Axiom (actually Fricas) is "in Sage". It's just not included standard
with every copy of Sage. It's easy to install into Sage though by doing
sage -i fricas-1.0.2
This uses pre-compiled lisp and should install pretty quickly (a few minutes)
on all Sage-supported platforms. (Many thanks to the hard work of
Bill Page, Waldek Habisch, and Gaby Dos Reis for this!)
Your claim that Axiom is not in Sage is identical to claiming g++ isn't in
Ubuntu, because it doesn't come with the standard live/install cd.
However g++ is in Ubuntu because you can do
apt-get install g++
> If I'm part of the community, given my current understanding of the
> situation, my vote is to allow Axiom
Axiom is already in Sage.
> and reject (or change) your Design Principle.
Are you calling a vote to change
http://wiki.sagemath.org/spkg/InclusionProcedure
to remove the section about Build Support?
> 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.
> 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.
I regularly read journals that charge for subscriptions, and I regularly
use commercial mathematical software. I have valid licenses for
Maple, Magma, Mathematica, and Matlab, and I've used all these
programs in the last month. In the last week I've downloaded dozens
of papers from pay-only subscription journals.
And yet, I find Sage/Python and open source math software in general
very useful. Perhaps Fateman doesn't understand how this can
be possible because he is not engaged in pure math research, or
doesn't understand the current capabilities and drawbacks of the
aformentioned systems in all areas of mathematics.
>> 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.
Algorithms can be patented. Anything a person writes down has a
reasonable chance of being copyrighted.
-- William
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