William Stein wrote: > Hello, > > Sun Microsystems wants Sage to be much more well known, so they are > throwing some of the considerable marketing resources at this problem. > > Ellen Fellenz from Sun asks several specific *marketing* questions > about Sage below. If anybody here has any thoughts about how they > would answer these questions, please go for it and respond to this > email answering them. I'll put together your answers with some > thoughts of my own, and send them on to Ellen. > > Thanks! > > William
A few thoughts I have quickly, as I need to go and 'catch' a train. (I hope the train is not too heavy! Funny expression that one.) > - Can you provide a few key points as to why Sage products are > valuable to Educational Institutions implementing Open Source > technology? I'm probably not the best person to answer this one, as I have not worked in an academic environment for some time, but some things I can think of: * The fact the software is licensed under the GPL, ensures IT staff do not spend time managing the licenses and license servers, which are often extremely complex. (I recall having major hassles with the flexlm license manager used by MATLAB. Then I recall looking on the web site of flexlm's producers and finding it was possible to go on a week long course on using the license manager!! Most IT staff hate flexlm. Mathematica uses a similar system, but is their own. ) * Software can be managed from one central computer by IT staff * Users that have a particular desire to have the latest version of Sage can install it on machines without needing to have administrator/root privileges. * When publishing scientific results, it is possible to state the algorithms used in computations, which is not possible with closed source software which implements. * Universities can have technical discussions with industrial parteners using a web-based front end, with confidentiality ensured by the use of a secure socket layer (SSL) encryption. There is no need for the industrial partner to have to purchase the software, or even install the software. > - In high level terms, how do Sage's software products benefit from > running on Sun's Open Source infrastructure? * If any technical issues arise, the fact that the source code to OpenSolaris is available makes it much faster to resolve issues than it would be if the source was closed. (A specific example was this case of the "MPFR test failure problem") --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
