Some thoughts from a 'User': These type of decisions result is 'situations' that affect anyone who wants to be able to use Sage as well as the developers. I am voicing my opinion as a 'USER' not as a developer and therefore have a vested interest from that perspective. I have & intend to maintain a 'free' sage installation on my server for my wiki that deals with physics related interests. At least I'm working towards getting it all meshed together. The intent is to provide some tools for folks that might otherwise be unable to have access them, students, hobbyists, etc. I can NOT afford to use Mathematica, and other composite systems like Kantor are insufficient. I searched the net and found Sage math and adopted it. I did so hoping that I had decided to hang my hat on a project that is very similar to Debian Linux which I have supported for years. My grandson Nathan is 7 and math is his passion. He uses the Sage notebook as a plaything and loves it, so the aspects of well documented 'free' software reach much further than you might anticipate. The point is that as developers with a vision that seems to be one I favor, you need to provide your efforts with the appropriate 'shelter' , so that it will thrive. If UW is not the best choice, then so be it. However, it seems to me that a choice, and a course of action needs to be laid out and William is the main person to make those decisions. He has asked for opinions from the developers on this issue & I believe that is the correct procedure.
Perhaps the developers would agree to become more organized in order to provide some 'entity' that governs the growth & the direction that Sage takes, & to provide for an environment that all of you favor. Either way, I think having 'in house' legal council is advisable before making any decisions. If money is required for this, then I suggest some effort be made to make those arrangements. There is a donation link on the main website & that is managed by UW. So consider they actually may already 'OWN' the Sage name & logo by proxy, especially since its running & hosted on their servers. If that is the case then William is correct that they should be the hosting entity as it would be futile to attempt to take it away from them. Since the sage software is GPLed the only consideration here is the name & logo. GPLed software can always be forked and in fact re-branded (i.e. Ubuntu, Mint Linux, etc), so I don't see that as any issue. frosty -- 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
