Alex Ghitza wrote:
On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:29:59 +0000, "Dr. David Kirkby"
<david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote:
# This can also be computed in Wolfram Alpha, which uses Mathematica
# as a back end.
#
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=N[Integrate[+Sin[x]%2Fx^2%2C{x%2C1%2CPi%2F2}]%2C50]
We really need to be careful about this. Wolfram|Alpha has very
specific terms of use, which I think could be interpreted as forbidding
precisely the use that you suggest. I quote from one of the relevant
sections (there might be others):
Ways You May Use Our Free Service and Its Results
The free Wolfram|Alpha service is available for ad hoc, personal,
non-commercial use only. For such use you are welcome to download
results, print copies, store downloaded content on your computer, and
reference this information in your documents. You may use it to get
information for your own use for any purpose, including occasional
purposes related to your job, as long as you aren't specifically being
paid to use Wolfram|Alpha.
Systematic professional or commercial use of the website, or use for
which you are being specifically paid, requires a commercial license. If
you are interested in a version of Wolfram|Alpha that allows such use,
please contact us.
It is permitted to use and post individual, incidental results or small
groups of results from Wolfram|Alpha on non-commercial websites and
blogs, provided those results are properly credited to Wolfram|Alpha
(see Attribution and Licensing below). It is not permitted to extract
multiple pieces of data and reassemble them into anything with the
characteristics of a data service, database, or source of large and
systematic collections of data. You are not allowed to use Wolfram|Alpha
to create something that is likely or intended to be reused as a data
source for further processing, or that in some other way serves as a
replacement or alternative to using Wolfram|Alpha itself. This applies
whether what you create is in electronic or print form.
One could argue that we are creating something that is intended to
replace or serve as an alternative to Wolfram|Alpha. In which case we
better not use their results in Sage (not even in doctests) or we're in
trouble.
It would be a bit of a stretch of the imagination to suggest Sage is a
replacement or alternative to using Wolfram Alpha. I can't see anyone wishing to
download 260 MB of source code, or a 500 MB binary to replace or serve as an
alternative to Wolfram Alpha.
It should also be noted that Sage existed before Wolfram Alpha did and Sage's
mission has not been revised in any way since Wolfram Alpha was released.
But I can see you may have a point. (As always, a legal opinion is needed on
this). It is certainly good you bought the point up though.
It would be good if William emailed Wolfram Research and asked about this, as
it's not clear.
It could be a useful to give increased confidence.
(Note that similar terms of use might apply to Mathematica itself or
other commercial math software packages; I don't have any available at
this very moment to check.)
I can't find a similar term.
http://www.wolfram.com/terms/MathematicaLicenseAgreement.pdf
I suspect a lot of people developing Sage have access to Mathematica or other
similar software, and could verify results. Or if not, ask on sage-devel for
someone else to verify a result using whatever (hardware, software, brain power
...) to verify the results.
We can however use mpmath, octave, or whatever other suitably-licensed
software for independent verifications of numerical results.
IMHO, the usefulness of a test is dramatically reduced if the expected result is
not independently verified.
Best,
Alex
Dave
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