One other important point when interpreting my interjection (which again I stress is my own personal opinion), is that when mounting a campaign for a large grant, here in Europe or elsewhere, one must very clearly communicate what *need* is being addressed. If there isn't a clear need, you won't get money.
If your project is perfect, and you go around telling everyone that it is, you will never be successful in getting the funding you desperately need. The reality here in Europe is that mathematical research projects of a computational nature struggle for their very existence. They are often run out of a single lab with one or two main developers and a few postdocs and PhD's if they are lucky. Some European mathematical software projects may not even be around tomorrow if they don't get appropriate funding. Not because they aren't worthy, or didn't have sufficient novelty, research value or smart people working on them or because they weren't feasible, but because everyone just assumed they would keep going on their own. They won't. These projects do not exist for the benefit of Sage. And in its current state, no matter how noble or well-intentioned or international Sage is, they can't! Sage does add value to those projects by widening the usership of those projects, by contributing bug reports and build patches, by bringing them publicity and in other ways. But one should never confuse this kind of support with sustained funding. In the same way, those project are benefiting Sage by being the best possible core components they can, given the heavy constraints they have on manpower, time and budget. But the end of those projects is not the enrichment of Sage, but the enrichment of their direct beneficiaries, which from the perspective of a grant application is the economy of the country who provided the grants, or the scientific enrichment of the union. To that end, we must, in my opinion, be very careful when applying for funds to "work on Sage". Who are the beneficiaries? How will they benefit? What is the strategy to achieve that goal? Is it sustainable, practical? What scientific merit does it have? How does it leverage the local expertise? What is its novelty? How well is it engineered? That's another 2c I'm owed for my personal opinion. Bill. On Friday, 29 August 2014 14:03:06 UTC+2, Bill Hart wrote: > > > > On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: >> >> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism >> rears its head. I thought the time where we only support German science >> were over... >> > > You have misunderstood. When applying for German funding, the rules will > naturally state that the project must benefit the people paying for the > work, namely German companies and Mutter und Vater taxpayer. > > When applying for European funding, the rules will naturally state that > the funding must benefit the people paying for the work, namely the > European Union members. > > The idea that European funds should be used primarily to support an > international project *with no direct benefit to European projects* invoked > in the grant is patently a non-starter. That's just as bad, in my opinion, > as taking public funds to work on a closed source mathematical system! > > >> >> What sets Sage apart from GAP/Singular (and, I dare say: Flint) is the >> scale and the diversity of its contributors. >> > > No, what sets it apart is the number of contributors. Flint has had > contributors from all over the world. I would say from every continent > except Africa and Antarctica. > > We are talking about how to mount a campaign for European funding, not > about nationalising Open Source projects. And we are talking about the > maintainers and core developers of projects, not their volunteer > contributors. > > The reality is Singular is run out of Kaiserslautern, Germany, Pari out of > Bordeaux, France and Gap out of St. Andrews UK. They all have volunteer > contributors all over the place. But these are not paid employees, or at > the least volunteers paid by another University (to primarily do teaching > or research)! > > Flint is too small to be owned by a given university. The two core > developers currently aren't even at the same institution. It has received > EPSRC (UK support), DFG (German support), Austrian support and had a > developer at Harvard for a time. Even its maintainer (me) has been > supported from grants in two separate European countries! Flint has also > had salaries/stipends paid for from Google Summer of Code and from MSRI. > > Saying that it is a US (or European) project is just completely wrong. >> >> > It was started by William Stein at the University of Washington. A large > portion of the funding that built that project up came from grants of > William Stein and other funding he obtained, including from the NSF. He is > also in the process of trying to build a company in collaboration with the > University of Washington to make money to fund Sage development. > > The Sage Foundation is run through the University of Washington. If I > donate to the project, the money is handled by the University of Washington. > > There is no way that you can justify the assertion that Sage is not > primarily administered out of the US. And it has oodles of unpaid > developers all over the world. > > >> >> On Friday, August 29, 2014 11:46:14 AM UTC+1, Bill Hart wrote: >>> >>> This is all to say nothing of the glaring problems, such as the lack of >>> Windows 64 support >>> >> >> Wait, did you just do a 180 and say that we should drop everything to >> boost the market share of a failing north American software company? ;-) >> > > No. I never suggested that contributions of code should be made to > Microsoft. > > Bill. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
