On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 7:33 AM, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > On 2 February 2011 09:55, Robert Bradshaw <rober...@math.washington.edu> > wrote: >> On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 6:21 AM, Dr. David Kirkby > >>> Sage is something people work on in their spare time, so you can't dictate >>> to people what they do. But if there was a plan, people could be encouraged >>> to work on what is considered important. Student projects could be based >>> around specific goals. >>> >>> We should also have status reports. See for example some of the archived >>> FreeBSD status reports. >>> >>> http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2009-04-2009-09.html >>> http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2008-10-2008-12.html >>> http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2008-07-2008-09.html >>> >>> To me at least, it seems the vast majority of people ware working on what >>> interests them, >> >> Yes, exactly, though I would like to point out that while few things >> are of interest to the entire Sage community, most code that goes in >> is of interest to large groups of people. > > That's not the impression I get, when I've seen many times comments > that X is broken, but nobody is using X anyway. I've also seen > comments that "I'm probably the only one using feature Y"
Things that are broken is a heavily skewed sample to things that are not used. > But I see no logical argument for having any code that is only of use > to one or two people. I actually agree here, especially now that Sage has more than one or two users. I might draw the line lower than you though (if a dozen people use it, put it in). > As a matter of interst, how many people do you expect make use of code > to solve Rubiks cube? Do you really think that should have been in the > main Sage library, or would it have been more appropiate to have such > functionality as optional item? As this gets brought up many times, let me clarify the history (I'm the one who added it). David Joiner was releasing his popular math book http://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/ecom/MasterServlet/GetItemDetailsHandler?iN=9780801890130&qty=1&viewMode=3&loggedIN=false&JavaScript=y and, among other things, expanding it to talk about Sage. Sage was extreemly new at this point, so this was a great chance to get exposure, and one of the examples was showing how to solve a Rubik's cube using Sage to demonstrate group theory. Of course the Rubik's group is a very special group, so solving it using the generic word problem is a very slow way of going about it, and I didn't want Sage to be known as "the software that takes 75000 times longer than it should to solve the Rubik's cube." Optimal solutions are a also a very interesting problem from the group-theoretic perspective, and so it made sense to put that in along with it. Now it's widely distributed in print, so removing it would be a bad idea (even if the marketing side of things was no longer an issue). >>> * No documented plan >>> * No real documented estimates of time scales >>> * No status reports for the project as a whole. >> >> Anyone could come up with a plan, but who would enforce it? > > Nobody could enforce it. I've made it very clear on a project where > people devote their time for zero financial reward, you can't force > them to do anything. > >> Who would >> allocate the resources to make it happen? > > Not everything would happen. Nobody will "make" it happen, but you > will increase the probability of good things happening if one has some > goals and plans. > >> Most large OSS projects have >> full-time staff as well as many non-paid contributors--we don't. > > Do you believe it would be easier to attract funding if those > considering funding a project could see a set of goals and plans? Or > do you think people/companies considering funding software projects > would not care if a project had a plan? Most grant proposals and other requests for funding have very specific plans, people, timelines, etc. attached to them. In light of your (and other people's) concerns, I think it would be very good if there were a more central location to see this, what people were working on, and status reports. I may have come across as portraying sage development as too individualistic--much work is done by individuals, but the level of a single grant with one or more PIs, their collaborators, students, etc. with clear-cut goals and timelines has provided a good level of organization that gets things done, but the funded grants tend to be of narrower focus than all of Sage. A steering committee might be a good idea, we have JSage which somewhat fulfills this role. - Robert -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
