On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 2:48 AM, Harald Schilly <harald.schi...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Nov 21, 7:56 pm, rjf <fate...@gmail.com> wrote: >> He also omits the (to me) logical entries for other >> possible programming language familiarity, e.g. C, C++, Java, PHP, >> Ruby, Perl, and Lisp, among others. >> >> Presuming it is entirely innocent that Harald omits Axiom, Reduce, and >> Maxima from this list, it would be easy enough to change the survey, >> and correct the omissions. >> Harald, in private email, says he has 150 responses already and has >> decided not change the survey. > > Let me explain again what Harald has tried to tell you. > 1. those questions in the survey are just for a very general picture. > It's > 1.a) not a complete opensource vs. closedsource math software survey. > I told you in a private email that we and others (sympy...) can do > this in a coordinated fashion, together, asking all users at all our > email lists to get a complete picture - not a picture filtered by the > users of the sage community. > 1. b) the survey doesn't imply that any other software is bad just > because it is not mentioned > 1. c) it's tedious to answer too many questions about software > 1. d) it is not wise to add new questions after there are already 150 > answers (with a target of about 200-250) > > 2. you only mention that axiom, reduce and maxima is missing. i > replied you that also gap, sympy, and many other maybe relevant > software systems are missing. once again, it's not a general survey, > it's just a small section for a general overview, nothing special and > definitely not the purpose of this survey. > > 3. once i decide that the survey is over (only a few submission per > day) i can send you the entire data personally if you like - including > timestamps of each answer. then you can see how many responses where > in which time intervals ... you can also get the times when the calls > for answering the questionnaire on sage-devel, sage-support and sage- > edu happend by looking into the mailing list archives (sage-devel was > a bit earlier than the others)
Actually, 3 makes me uncomfortable, since we didn't specifically say in the survey that we were making all survey material publicly available. I might have been more guarded in my survey responses had I known that. Moreover, having skimmed the responses, I think many respondents are identifiable by a combination of what they say and where they are from. I think it would be better to have a strong privacy policy about how we use our "market research data" that we staunchly adhere to -- this will in the long run be better for our credibility. -- William -- To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org
