Re: [sage-combinat-devel] #7922 timing issues
Hi Dan, I have just been through your #7922 patches, and put a reviewers patch in the Sage-Combinat queue: trac_7922-review-nt.patch Altogether it looks good. I did a few changes, and also added a series of comments and suggestions. Please check them out, and decide which ones you want to implement now, later, or never :-) Feel free to ask for details! To avoid confusion, the little patch with just the change on the hash function for CombinatorialFreeModule is now called trac_7922-hash-nt.patch. It apparently triggers a couple changes in the output (term ordering). I haven't updated those doctests yet, since we have not decided if this change should go in 7922 or in a later patch. Cheers, Nicolas PS: our internet at home is broken, so I might be subresponsive ... -- Nicolas M. Thiéry Isil nthi...@users.sf.net http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-combinat-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-combinat-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-combinat-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-combinat-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-combinat-devel] #7922 timing issues
On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 06:12:15PM +0100, Nicolas M. Thiery wrote: - What would be an efficient implementation of hashing for free module elements? The one you implemented in AmbientSpace can be 10 times faster than the default one provided by SageObject and using repr. So it would be worth to at least move it up to CombinatorialFreeModule, if not to optimize it further: sage: X = CombinatorialFreeModule(ZZ,ZZ) sage: X.an_element() 3*B[-1] + B[0] + 3*B[1] sage: x = X.an_element() sage: %timeit hash(x) 625 loops, best of 3: 46.9 µs per loop sage: X = RootSystem([A,7]).ambient_space() sage: x = X.an_element() sage: %timeit hash(x) 625 loops, best of 3: 4.82 µs per loop It could actually make sense to cache it, although just using cached_method at this point is not worthwhile (but could become so after further optimization): sage: %timeit hash(x) 625 loops, best of 3: 15.5 µs per loop I just put the following in CombinatorialFreeModule.Element:: def __hash__(self): EXAMPLES:: sage: F = CombinatorialFreeModule(QQ, ['a','b','c']) sage: x = F.an_element() sage: hash(x) 7147938738610841595 # 64-bit 1327966203# 32-bit sage: e = RootSystem(['A',2]).ambient_space() sage: hash(e.simple_root(0)) -7426163263873843813 # 64-bit 1690205595# 32-bit return sum(hash(item) for item in self) sage: X = RootSystem([A,7]).ambient_space() sage: x = X.an_element() sage: %timeit hash(x) 625 loops, best of 3: 3.84 µs per loop On this example, it's 20% faster; I guess the gain would increase on larger elements. Besides it does not depend on the basis index to be sortable. It's in a patch trac_7922-review.patch just after yours in the Sage-Combinat queue; I'll push it when I have internet access. Shall we include it in #7922? Anyone something better to suggest? Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry Isil nthi...@users.sf.net http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-combinat-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-combinat-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-combinat-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-combinat-devel?hl=en.
[sage-combinat-devel] sage combinat install failed
Hi, I got a mail from someone who wanted to install sage and the combinat queue in order to look at the cluster algebra package. Here is the error code he got, maybe someone knows how to handle it, I don't: $ ./sage -combinat install Creating sage-combinat branch: /Applications/sage/sage -b main -- sage: Building and installing modified Sage library files. Installing c_lib gcc -o src/convert.os -c -fPIC -I/Applications/sage/local/include -I/Applications/sage/local/include/python2.6 -I/Applications/sage/local/include/NTL -Iinclude src/convert.c In file included from include/convert.h:12, from src/convert.c:14: /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:20:47: error: stdlib.h: No such file or directory /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:23:38: error: sys/types.h: No such file or directory /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:29:22: error: signal.h: No such file or directory /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:30:21: error: stdio.h: No such file or directory /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:34:20: error: setjmp.h: No such file or directory /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:35:20: error: string.h: No such file or directory /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:37:22: error: unistd.h: No such file or directory /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:41:18: error: math.h: No such file or directory /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:42:20: error: memory.h: No such file or directory /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:43:19: error: ctype.h: No such file or directory In file included from /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:51, from include/convert.h:12, from src/convert.c:14: /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/paristio.h:47: error: expected specifier-qualifier-list before ‘FILE’ /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/paristio.h:136: error: expected ‘=’, ‘,’, ‘;’, ‘asm’ or ‘__attribute__’ before ‘*’ token In file included from /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:56, from include/convert.h:12, from src/convert.c:14: /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/paridecl.h:1417: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/paridecl.h:1421: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/paridecl.h:1423: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/paridecl.h:1438: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/paridecl.h:1457: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/paridecl.h:1869: error: expected declaration specifiers or ‘...’ before ‘jmp_buf’ In file included from /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:59, from include/convert.h:12, from src/convert.c:14: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h: In function ‘truedivii’: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:505: error: ‘NULL’ undeclared (first use in this function) ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:505: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:505: error: for each function it appears in.) ../src/kernel/none/level1.h: In function ‘truedivis’: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:507: error: ‘NULL’ undeclared (first use in this function) ../src/kernel/none/level1.h: In function ‘truedivsi’: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:509: error: ‘NULL’ undeclared (first use in this function) ../src/kernel/none/level1.h: In function ‘divii’: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:512: error: ‘NULL’ undeclared (first use in this function) ../src/kernel/none/level1.h: In function ‘smodss’: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:526: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘labs’ ../src/kernel/none/level1.h: In function ‘sdivss_rem’: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:535: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘labs’ ../src/kernel/none/level1.h: In function ‘sdivsi_rem’: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:564: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘labs’ ../src/kernel/none/level1.h: In function ‘sdivsi’: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:579: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘labs’ ../src/kernel/none/level1.h: In function ‘smodis’: ../src/kernel/none/level1.h:616: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘labs’ In file included from /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pari.h:62, from include/convert.h:12, from src/convert.c:14: /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pariinl.h: In function ‘stack_init’: /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pariinl.h:558: error: ‘NULL’ undeclared (first use in this function) /Applications/sage/local/include/pari/pariinl.h: In function ‘pari_malloc’:
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On 26 February 2011 06:52, William Stein wst...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 3:16 AM, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: As for the issue I raised as support contracts, then the following might be a method which would not irritate anyone, so has almost zero probability of losing any Sage developers. Use the money only to 1) Pay for extra hardware. I don't know if you have UPSs, but that would increase the uptime. I have UPS's. It's important to note that purchasing hardware has a lot of overhead, e.g., support staff, electricity, space, air conditioning, etc. True, though to be honest I don't see this making a huge amount of money. 2) Pay for advertising Sage in maths journals, New Scientist, or if deemed appropriate, anywhere where the 4 M's are advertised. a) Can somebody do some research on the actual costs of doing this? I sent an email to New Scientist asking for the prices for a full page. 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8th page, and also what could be bought for $75 (if anything) and $400. (I doubt you would get anything of use in paper for $75, but you might get online advertising) I'll let you know if I get some prices. I did state it was free/open-source with a link to the Sage web page. It might be cheaper than full commercial rates - I have no idea. b) Is 2) something that will annoy anybody reading this? I could see somebody being annoyed that valuable Sage money is being spent on advertising. (I personally think advertising is a good idea.) I think it is less likely to irritate than seeing it to go one individual. I find it hard to see how someone could be annoyed the fact you are trying to promote via paid advertising what they work on. Personally I think it would be great if one could see Sage when one did a search for Mathematica. Would anyone seriously object to that? 3) Pay for targeted advertisements on Google - Mathematica, MATLAB, Maple might be nice keywords. Can somebody do some research on the actual costs of doing this? I had a quick look on Google. To set up an adwords account there is a fee of $5.00. The minimum cost/click is $0.01. You can use a pre-pay system, with a minimum cost of $10.00. So it seems if you sold a contract, you could do something with the $75 (per incident) and $400 (per year). Do *not* pay any individual Sage developer or a mathematician to work on some aspect of Sage, as that could potentially cause a bit of bad feeling. Since many individual Sage developers have been paid to work on aspects of Sage over the years, I'm curious whether this has actually caused bad feelings. (Anonymous offlist responses are fine.) It certainly has the potential to do so. I doubt it would be an issue if you paid a temporary secretary to do some work for Sage if that was felt needed. But when one developer gets paid, and another does not, you have the potential to cause bad feeling, which is the last thing you want to do. That's why I think things like advertising will be less likely to irritate anyone. One could sink an endless amount of money into advertising. Make the accounts public. State the number of contracts sold (obviously not to who), and disclose how the money has been spent - X to Google, Y for hard disks, Z for UPS's etc. This sounds nice in theory, but it has to be balanced with it being precisely what customers sometimes don't want. There is little advantage to them to having how they spend their money publicized; it might help their competitors. You should *never* disclose who the customers are. Nobody needs to know if Airbus, the Red Cross or anyone else buys a contract. Just I sold an annual contract for $400 or something like that. Given this, I see no reason the way money is spent could be an issue. (Perhaps some might be concerned if the contract was sold to Colonel Gaddafi, and them asked to support him, so perhaps you should draw the line at that point, and refuse to sell a contract) Personally, I don't feel the amount of money raised would be huge. But the fact commercial support was available, could make Sage more attractive to commercial customers. It's a fact that the numerical/engineering aspects of Sage already have commercial support from Enthought (in the US, and other companies elsewhere, e.g., in France), and I've heard they are currently doing very well. I do find it hard to believe you are going to attract a lot of customers - at least in the next few years. I don't know how many commercial users there are now, but I suspect not too many. I think there's too much emphasis on maths, and not enough on engineering applications for now. So I suspect you will find the number of industrial users is quite small. But it makes it easier for someone to get their employer to use Sage if they can say its free, but we can get confidential support at reasonable rates if we need it. Support can be a big issue in companies. There are lots of companies offering support on
[sage-devel] Including GPLv3+ code in Sage (2)
On 2011-02-26 07:57, William Stein wrote: The *optional* spkg's do not have to comply with the GPLv2+, because they are not distributed with Sage. I hope you are not saying that all standard packages DO have to comply with GPLv2+ otherwise we are in trouble. The standard package cvxopt-1.1.3.spkg (and possibly others) is GPLv3+ , so it can *NOT* be distributed under GPLv2+. We had this discussion before when we wanted to include a new version of cvxopt in Sage and then the concensus seemed to be (at least that was my interpretation) that spkg did not need to comply with GPLv2+. Jeroen. -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] sqlachemy
Is SQLAlchemy actually used in Sage at all? We distribute an old version (0.5.8) as a standard spkg. However, I can't seem to find where it is being used: ~/sage/devel/sage/sage% grep -ri sqlalchemy * databases/database.py:#- wrap sqlalchemy So apparently it isn't imported in any of the sage library. Is it a dependency of another standard package? I'm asking because I'm upgrading it to a more recent version, but if it isn't used in Sage, I wonder if it might be better to just cut it out. Not used by anything else. It is just provided with sage to deal with sql database in python. I believe William Stein uses it. Francois This email may be confidential and subject to legal privilege, it may not reflect the views of the University of Canterbury, and it is not guaranteed to be virus free. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and erase all copies of the message and any attachments. Please refer to http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/emaildisclaimer for more information. -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On Saturday, February 26, 2011 7:05:42 AM UTC, William wrote: (in the US) it is very difficult to set up a non-profit and make sure you are and remain in compliance with all rules. This is all true. I got around this so far via the University of Washington, which has an army of accountants, lawyers, etc. Its true that its nice to have the university backing. But depending on how much overhead the University charges this may or may not be a cost-effective way of running things. I take it that they take far less than the usual rate (40%?) from private donations? Volker -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Including GPLv3+ code in Sage (2)
On 26 February 2011 10:36, Jeroen Demeyer jdeme...@cage.ugent.be wrote: On 2011-02-26 07:57, William Stein wrote: The *optional* spkg's do not have to comply with the GPLv2+, because they are not distributed with Sage. I hope you are not saying that all standard packages DO have to comply with GPLv2+ otherwise we are in trouble. The standard package cvxopt-1.1.3.spkg (and possibly others) is GPLv3+ , so it can *NOT* be distributed under GPLv2+. We had this discussion before when we wanted to include a new version of cvxopt in Sage and then the concensus seemed to be (at least that was my interpretation) that spkg did not need to comply with GPLv2+. Jeroen. I have similar concerns. I think the FSF really screwed up creating the GPL 3. If you look at the Matrix at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility I can't honestly see how we can distribute GPL 3 code on a GPL v2+ license. The matrix shows: OK: Convey project under GPLv3 [3] Footnote 3 says: If you have the ability to release the project under GPLv2 or any later version, you can choose to release it under GPLv3 or any later version—and once you do that, you'll be able to incorporate the code released under GPLv3. So it seems to me we need to upgrade to GPL 3, but then that would stop us using some code which is GPL 2 only. It seems a catch 22. This is a huge can of worms. Also, the Cygwin port needs OpenSSL installed, despite the fact the FSF consider that against the GPL. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses The license of OpenSSL is a conjunction of two licenses, one of them being the license of SSLeay. You must follow both. The combination results in a copyleft free software license that is incompatible with the GNU GPL. It also has an advertising clause like the original BSD license and the Apache license. Dave -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Wolfram|Alpha appears to understand some Sage inputs
On 26 February 2011 04:32, rjf fate...@gmail.com wrote: On Feb 25, 4:28 pm, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: Of course, creating the BNF is a non-trivial task, but it seems the descriptions of most languages don't actually include a BNF. I think you can find a formal grammar for almost every computer programming language except for Mathematica, which presumably has a grammar but it is secret. Look at it this way: with such a formal description it is relatively easy to write a parser, and to be assured that the parser corresponds to the grammar, which a computer scientist would use to help design a language. Most people would run the grammar through a parser generator and eliminate constructions that are not consistent with the needs of the parser generator. It cleans up ambiguities, among other things. Since you were planning to write a parser, why not write the grammar first... I was hoping someone might have done it, as the task seems non-trivial. Did you write one for MockMMA, and if so are you willing to share it? I would have expected that in your perusal of compiler books you would get this idea. Yes, I did, though geting it from reading the Mathematica docs is a lot more difficult than generating one for a language one chose to design oneself. Perhaps one can be found for C, but it's not in KR book. C Programming Language (2nd Edition) (Paperback) by Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie page 234 et seq I overlooked that. Thank you for the correction. Dave -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Including GPLv3+ code in Sage (2)
On 2011-02-26 14:30, David Kirkby wrote: On 26 February 2011 12:45, David Joyner wdjoy...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 7:19 AM, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: So it seems to me we need to upgrade to GPL 3, but then that would stop us using some code which is GPL 2 only. It seems a catch 22. Which standard packages are GPL2 only? I didn't know there were any. Just a search of the COPYING file shows:at least the following appear to be GPL 2 only. I've not investigated these thoroughly, though. At least Mercurial and PARI are GPLv2+. But for example R is GPLv2 only. -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 1:29 AM, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: On 26 February 2011 06:52, William Stein wst...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 3:16 AM, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: As for the issue I raised as support contracts, then the following might be a method which would not irritate anyone, so has almost zero probability of losing any Sage developers. Use the money only to 1) Pay for extra hardware. I don't know if you have UPSs, but that would increase the uptime. I have UPS's. It's important to note that purchasing hardware has a lot of overhead, e.g., support staff, electricity, space, air conditioning, etc. True, though to be honest I don't see this making a huge amount of money. Making money?Your sentence does not make sense. It's more complicated than just money though... I can't add any hardware to my server room without carefully taking into accounts the rest of the math and CS departments usage, etc. It's just something to keep in mind. 2) Pay for advertising Sage in maths journals, New Scientist, or if deemed appropriate, anywhere where the 4 M's are advertised. a) Can somebody do some research on the actual costs of doing this? I sent an email to New Scientist asking for the prices for a full page. 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8th page, and also what could be bought for $75 (if anything) and $400. (I doubt you would get anything of use in paper for $75, but you might get online advertising) I'll let you know if I get some prices. I did state it was free/open-source with a link to the Sage web page. It might be cheaper than full commercial rates - I have no idea. Many thanks! b) Is 2) something that will annoy anybody reading this? I could see somebody being annoyed that valuable Sage money is being spent on advertising. (I personally think advertising is a good idea.) I think it is less likely to irritate than seeing it to go one individual. I find it hard to see how someone could be annoyed the fact you are trying to promote via paid advertising what they work on. Personally I think it would be great if one could see Sage when one did a search for Mathematica. Would anyone seriously object to that? I think it would be great. Actually, I just searched for mathematica in google and two of the hits on the first page are for Sage, which is cool. 3) Pay for targeted advertisements on Google - Mathematica, MATLAB, Maple might be nice keywords. Can somebody do some research on the actual costs of doing this? I had a quick look on Google. To set up an adwords account there is a fee of $5.00. The minimum cost/click is $0.01. You can use a pre-pay system, with a minimum cost of $10.00. So it seems if you sold a contract, you could do something with the $75 (per incident) and $400 (per year). That sounds worth it. Do *not* pay any individual Sage developer or a mathematician to work on some aspect of Sage, as that could potentially cause a bit of bad feeling. Since many individual Sage developers have been paid to work on aspects of Sage over the years, I'm curious whether this has actually caused bad feelings. (Anonymous offlist responses are fine.) It certainly has the potential to do so. I doubt it would be an issue if you paid a temporary secretary to do some work for Sage if that was felt needed. But when one developer gets paid, and another does not, you have the potential to cause bad feeling, which is the last thing you want to do. That's why I think things like advertising will be less likely to irritate anyone. One could sink an endless amount of money into advertising. Make the accounts public. State the number of contracts sold (obviously not to who), and disclose how the money has been spent - X to Google, Y for hard disks, Z for UPS's etc. This sounds nice in theory, but it has to be balanced with it being precisely what customers sometimes don't want. There is little advantage to them to having how they spend their money publicized; it might help their competitors. You should *never* disclose who the customers are. Nobody needs to know if Airbus, the Red Cross or anyone else buys a contract. Just I sold an annual contract for $400 or something like that. Given this, I see no reason the way money is spent could be an issue. (Perhaps some might be concerned if the contract was sold to Colonel Gaddafi, and them asked to support him, so perhaps you should draw the line at that point, and refuse to sell a contract) Personally, I don't feel the amount of money raised would be huge. But the fact commercial support was available, could make Sage more attractive to commercial customers. It's a fact that the numerical/engineering aspects of Sage already have commercial support from Enthought (in the US, and other companies elsewhere, e.g., in France), and I've heard they are currently doing very well. I do find it hard to believe you are
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 2:56 AM, Volker Braun vbraun.n...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday, February 26, 2011 7:05:42 AM UTC, William wrote: (in the US) it is very difficult to set up a non-profit and make sure you are and remain in compliance with all rules. This is all true. I got around this so far via the University of Washington, which has an army of accountants, lawyers, etc. Its true that its nice to have the university backing. But depending on how much overhead the University charges this may or may not be a cost-effective way of running things. I take it that they take far less than the usual rate (40%?) from private donations? The Univ of Washington charges 0% overhead (so absolutely nothing!) on private donations and also on donations from companies. They charge 56% overhead on certain parts of NSF grants. They charge 56% overhead on most other grants. -- William Volker -- 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 -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- 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
[sage-devel] How to target Mathematica on Google - I'll pay !!!
I'm willing to donate £30.00 ($48) of my own money to target Mathematica, so when people search for it, they get ads for Sage on Google. That might not be enough to make any impact, but it's worth a try. 1) First, does anyone object to me doing this, or have any opinions why its a bad idea? 2) Secondly, would anyone object if William donated some money from Sage donations or other sources of income? I'm not suggesting William should do that, but he did wonder on another thread (Support contracts for commercial customers) if people might object to money being spent on advertising. Next question, how does one target languages and regions? According to Google trends, taking only the last 12 months http://www.google.co.uk/trends?q=mathematicactab=0geo=alldate=ytdsort=0 for search terms, 1) The most common search region is Greece 2) The most common search city is Cambridge, MA, USA. 3) The most common search language is Greek I must admit, the first and third surprise me a bit. One thing that I did consider is that in some countries, where software piracy is very common, the idea of saving money by using Sage rather than Mathematica might not be much incentive. I've no idea of the accuracy of this data, but http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software-piracy-rate ranks Armenia as the #1 country for piracy at 93%, Greece at #60 with 58%, the UK (where I live) at #27 with 26% and the USA at #107 with 20%. I can well believe 26% in the UK, as that figure probably includes games, but I think it will be a lot lower for professional software like Mathematica. One can either pay for a click or pay by the number of ads seen. Any thoughts on the best way to target this? Take a look at http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/adwords/jumpstart/09Q3-new.html to see the options. Creating the account is free, though there's a $5 one-off fee for actually taking out the ads. You can read a lot more, and experiment with keywords once you have an account. I suspect it needs more than £30 ($48) to make any serious impact, but it would be interesting to see what happens. Dave -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] How to target Mathematica on Google - I'll pay !!!
1) The most common search region is Greece 2) The most common search city is Cambridge, MA, USA. 3) The most common search language is Greek I must admit, the first and third surprise me a bit. In greek, mathematics is Μαθηματικά, i.e. Mathematica. So that result is in fact hardly surprising. I don't know how to avoid that spurious result, though. Regards, -- Bruno -- 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
[sage-devel] Review Request: #1819
Hi, if someone had some time to look at #1819 it would really be appreciated. It's not a deep patch, just a bunch of moving around. However, because stuff is moved around it has the tendency to bitrot relatively fast. http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/1819 Cheers, Martin -- name: Martin Albrecht _pgp: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x8EF0DC99 _otr: 47F43D1A 5D68C36F 468BAEBA 640E8856 D7951CCF _www: http://martinralbrecht.wordpress.com/ _jab: martinralbre...@jabber.ccc.de -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Including GPLv3+ code in Sage (2)
On 26 February 2011 13:57, Jeroen Demeyer jdeme...@cage.ugent.be wrote: On 2011-02-26 14:30, David Kirkby wrote: On 26 February 2011 12:45, David Joyner wdjoy...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 7:19 AM, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: So it seems to me we need to upgrade to GPL 3, but then that would stop us using some code which is GPL 2 only. It seems a catch 22. Which standard packages are GPL2 only? I didn't know there were any. Just a search of the COPYING file shows:at least the following appear to be GPL 2 only. I've not investigated these thoroughly, though. At least Mercurial and PARI are GPLv2+. But for example R is GPLv2 only. Are you sure about Mercurial and Pari? http://mercurial.selenic.com/about/ says Mercurial is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2. If one clicks the link to the license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt it says GPL 2, with no mention of GPLv2+, or any later version, so I'm unsure how you arrive at that. The Pari page has a link to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html which is GPL 3, but the source code has a COPYING file that starts: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 So I'm unsure how you arrive at either of those conclusions, though the Pari case is confusing. Dave -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: sqlachemy
On 2/26/11 4:40 AM, Francois Bissey wrote: Is SQLAlchemy actually used in Sage at all? We distribute an old version (0.5.8) as a standard spkg. However, I can't seem to find where it is being used: ~/sage/devel/sage/sage% grep -ri sqlalchemy * databases/database.py:#- wrap sqlalchemy So apparently it isn't imported in any of the sage library. Is it a dependency of another standard package? I'm asking because I'm upgrading it to a more recent version, but if it isn't used in Sage, I wonder if it might be better to just cut it out. Not used by anything else. It is just provided with sage to deal with sql database in python. I believe William Stein uses it. Thanks. On second thought, the new notebook that is currently being written will most likely use sqlalchemy, so it may be best to just leave it in, even if nothing in Sage uses it currently. Hopefully that new notebook will be done soon. At any rate, a new pkg is up at #10854. Thanks, Jason -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 09:28:32AM -0800, William Stein wrote: I'm also curious about honest *opinions* about how people in the Sage community would feel about a company making potentially gobs of money selling support contracts? What balance between profit and giving back to the community would be appropriate? What services might be offensive, and what would be OK? I personnaly can see only benefit in having companies finding business models around Sage, indeed as long as they do not tarnish Sage's image. In any case the future of such companies will totally depend on Sage becoming better; so there will be a natural incent for contributing back to the community one way or the other. Also, if some Sage dev manages to use his hard earned reputation to make some money, that's all fine for me. After all, I am myself using it to (tentatively) enhance my CV; that's not that different ... Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry Isil nthi...@users.sf.net http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] How to target Mathematica on Google - I'll pay !!!
2011/2/26 Bruno Le Floch blfla...@gmail.com: 1) The most common search region is Greece 2) The most common search city is Cambridge, MA, USA. 3) The most common search language is Greek I must admit, the first and third surprise me a bit. In greek, mathematics is Μαθηματικά, i.e. Mathematica. So that result is in fact hardly surprising. I don't know how to avoid that spurious result, though. Regards, -- Bruno Thank you. That clears that up. Most of the big cities searching for Mathematica are in the USA, but Vienna, (Austria), Zurich (Switzerland) and Beijing (China) are also popular places to search from. Does anyone know of likely spurious results from those countries? There are negative keywords one can use. For example, if Wolfram Research wanted to target Sage, but avoid the accountancy package, I believe they could add accountancy as a negative keyword. I'm not sure how that would help with Greece though. Perhaps the simplest solution is just to avoid Greece and Greek, on the basis that with limited funds, one would not want to waste ads, but target them as effectively as possible. When I set this up, and I will unless people can convince me it's a bad idea, it would be good if individuals could do a screen dump if they see the ad. Dave -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On 26 February 2011 14:31, William Stein wst...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 2:56 AM, Volker Braun vbraun.n...@gmail.com wrote: Its true that its nice to have the university backing. But depending on how much overhead the University charges this may or may not be a cost-effective way of running things. I take it that they take far less than the usual rate (40%?) from private donations? The Univ of Washington charges 0% overhead (so absolutely nothing!) on private donations and also on donations from companies. They charge 56% overhead on certain parts of NSF grants. They charge 56% overhead on most other grants. -- William 56% is high. At UCL it was 40%. Dave -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Including GPLv3+ code in Sage (2)
On 2/26/11 9:20 AM, David Kirkby wrote: On 26 February 2011 13:57, Jeroen Demeyerjdeme...@cage.ugent.be wrote: On 2011-02-26 14:30, David Kirkby wrote: On 26 February 2011 12:45, David Joynerwdjoy...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 7:19 AM, David Kirkbydavid.kir...@onetel.net wrote: So it seems to me we need to upgrade to GPL 3, but then that would stop us using some code which is GPL 2 only. It seems a catch 22. Which standard packages are GPL2 only? I didn't know there were any. Just a search of the COPYING file shows:at least the following appear to be GPL 2 only. I've not investigated these thoroughly, though. At least Mercurial and PARI are GPLv2+. But for example R is GPLv2 only. Are you sure about Mercurial and Pari? http://mercurial.selenic.com/about/ says Mercurial is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2. If one clicks the link to the license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt it says GPL 2, with no mention of GPLv2+, or any later version, so I'm unsure how you arrive at that. That's confusing, because the FAQ says GPLv2+: http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/License#What_is_Mercurial.27s_license.3F Jason -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Including GPLv3+ code in Sage (2)
On 26 February 2011 16:34, Jason Grout jason-s...@creativetrax.com wrote: On 2/26/11 9:20 AM, David Kirkby wrote: On 26 February 2011 13:57, Jeroen Demeyerjdeme...@cage.ugent.be wrote: At least Mercurial and PARI are GPLv2+. But for example R is GPLv2 only. Are you sure about Mercurial and Pari? http://mercurial.selenic.com/about/ says Mercurial is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2. If one clicks the link to the license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt it says GPL 2, with no mention of GPLv2+, or any later version, so I'm unsure how you arrive at that. That's confusing, because the FAQ says GPLv2+: http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/License#What_is_Mercurial.27s_license.3F Jason True, it is confusing - as is this whole GPL 2/3 mess created by the FSF. I'm inclined to believe the FAQ, which is a Wiki, but note that is Wiki which anyone in the world can edit, whereas the page I referenced, which says only GPL 2 http://mercurial.selenic.com/about/ can only be edited by a select number of people. Dave -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Including GPLv3+ code in Sage (2)
On 2/26/11 10:52 AM, David Kirkby wrote: On 26 February 2011 16:34, Jason Groutjason-s...@creativetrax.com wrote: On 2/26/11 9:20 AM, David Kirkby wrote: On 26 February 2011 13:57, Jeroen Demeyerjdeme...@cage.ugent.bewrote: At least Mercurial and PARI are GPLv2+. But for example R is GPLv2 only. Are you sure about Mercurial and Pari? http://mercurial.selenic.com/about/ says Mercurial is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2. If one clicks the link to the license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt it says GPL 2, with no mention of GPLv2+, or any later version, so I'm unsure how you arrive at that. That's confusing, because the FAQ says GPLv2+: http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/License#What_is_Mercurial.27s_license.3F Jason True, it is confusing - as is this whole GPL 2/3 mess created by the FSF. I'm inclined to believe the FAQ, which is a Wiki, but note that is Wiki which anyone in the world can edit, whereas the page I referenced, which says only GPL 2 http://mercurial.selenic.com/about/ can only be edited by a select number of people. Yes, it sounds like the confusion should be reported upstream to the Mercurial folks. Jason -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Wolfram|Alpha appears to understand some Sage inputs
On Feb 26, 5:37 am, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: I was hoping someone might have done it, [Write a grammar for Mathematica] as the task seems non-trivial. Did you write one for MockMMA, and if so are you willing to share it? 1. I (with a student) looked at the task and wrote a partial grammar, but despaired of completing it as we found too many ad hoc patches. Now it may be that someone has devised a complete and accurate grammar, especially one suited to some automated parser generator, e.g. LALR(1) or LL(1) or GLR but we were not clever enough to find a neat one. I believe, and this is a contentious point, it is likely for someone to think he has a complete and accurate grammar, even if it is not complete or accurate. People found errors in my parser (since corrected), after several years. There may still be errors. And now there are deliberate differences because I found more convenient notation, e.g. for comparisons. 2. The material in the file http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/lisp/mma4max/parser.lisp is source code for a parser. The parser is a recursive descent parser with programs named in a fairly uniform fashion from which one can generate a grammar. e.g. parse-dot, parse-power, But the actions associated with some of these reduction routines are nasty, and in some cases depend critically on material which should have been abstracted out of the grammar into the lexical phase. You (or anyone) is welcome to read up on recursive descent parsing and run the algorithm for generating a R.D. parser in reverse, and generate a grammar. But it won't be complete and accurate because the component subroutines do screwy things, like looking ahead for the occasional odd character, -- not token, but character. Now it may be possible to do all this with a parser; indeed it most assuredly IS possible, but the obvious grammar might be quite huge. A cleverly-encoded grammar might be smaller, but I think it would not be trivial to do that. Among other things it would have to take into account that blank space is sometimes a token, but sometimes not. 3. I am of course perfectly willing to share the code. It has, in fact, even been used in a proposal to the NSF under some small business initiation grant. I had nothing to do with the proposal, and the proposers did not seek my permission (not that they needed it). I'm sure that this discussion of the Mathematica syntax could be placed in a more accessible location, but who knows. Here's a puzzle. a.b.c is parsed as Dot[a,b,c] or in Lisp, (Dot a b c). 1 . 2 . 3 is parsed as Dot[1,2,3], and is displayed by Mathematica as 1.2.3 ... Observe the white-space or the lack of it around the dots. But if you type in 1.2.3 what do you think you get? And what about 1. 2.3 ? For those who do not have Mathematica handy 1.2.3 comes out as 0.36 And if you type it in to WolframAlpha you get 6. If you type it in to MockMMa, you get 6/5.3 (that is, (Dot 6/5 3). Note that 1.2 is converted to 6/5. What do you suppose Ira's parser produces? It is not the first case in which the person who wrote the display for Mathematica gives a result which is apparently at odds with the input syntax. [the C grammar] I overlooked that. Thank you for the correction. You are welcome. I think the important point I might re-emphasize is this: Parsing Mathematica syntax with a Sage back end does not get you very far. Any non-trivial piece of Mathematica will require a mathematica evaluator with matching, binding of variables, etc. while parsing Sin[x] to get sin(x) is trivial, it is mostly pointless. You might think that converting Integrate[f,x] into integrate(f,x) gets you somewhere, but the accessible syntax for translating f into Sage (or Maxima) consists of +,*,/, [,], and the typical functions like sin, cos, tan. Why would someone write in Mathematica syntax in the first place? Wolfram Alpha seems to not expect Mathematica syntax -- its parser seems to disagree. RJF -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 7:46 AM, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: On 26 February 2011 14:31, William Stein wst...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 2:56 AM, Volker Braun vbraun.n...@gmail.com wrote: Its true that its nice to have the university backing. But depending on how much overhead the University charges this may or may not be a cost-effective way of running things. I take it that they take far less than the usual rate (40%?) from private donations? The Univ of Washington charges 0% overhead (so absolutely nothing!) on private donations and also on donations from companies. They charge 56% overhead on certain parts of NSF grants. They charge 56% overhead on most other grants. -- William 56% is high. At UCL it was 40%. Are you drawing a conclusion from a sample size of 2? William -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
Surely advertising in academic places such as AMS Notices, LMS newsletter, and similar, would be cheaper than commercial publications, and also reach people more likely to use Sage and become developers? John -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On 26 February 2011 18:13, John Cremona john.crem...@gmail.com wrote: Surely advertising in academic places such as AMS Notices, LMS newsletter, and similar, would be cheaper than commercial publications, and also reach people more likely to use Sage and become developers? John True, though sometime like New Scientist would reach a different audience, and perhaps bring a skill set that Sage appears to lack. But I did not give much thought to where to advertise - just saying that advertising would be a good thing to spend some money on, and one unlikely to upset any Sage developers. Dave -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] How to target Mathematica on Google - I'll pay !!!
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 6:40 AM, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: I'm willing to donate £30.00 ($48) of my own money to target Mathematica, so when people search for it, they get ads for Sage on Google. That might not be enough to make any impact, but it's worth a try. 1) First, does anyone object to me doing this, or have any opinions why its a bad idea? 2) Secondly, would anyone object if William donated some money from Sage donations or other sources of income? I'm not suggesting William should do that, but he did wonder on another thread (Support contracts for commercial customers) if people might object to money being spent on advertising. I'm fine with spending a bit of money on advertising, but it does seem odd to me to particularly single out a competitor. Terms like math software could be useful. Next question, how does one target languages and regions? According to Google trends, taking only the last 12 months http://www.google.co.uk/trends?q=mathematicactab=0geo=alldate=ytdsort=0 for search terms, 1) The most common search region is Greece 2) The most common search city is Cambridge, MA, USA. 3) The most common search language is Greek I must admit, the first and third surprise me a bit. Mathematica could be something else in Greece or Greek. For example, http://www.mathematica.gr/ doesn't seem to be owned by Wolfram. One thing that I did consider is that in some countries, where software piracy is very common, the idea of saving money by using Sage rather than Mathematica might not be much incentive. I've no idea of the accuracy of this data, but http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software-piracy-rate ranks Armenia as the #1 country for piracy at 93%, Greece at #60 with 58%, the UK (where I live) at #27 with 26% and the USA at #107 with 20%. I can well believe 26% in the UK, as that figure probably includes games, but I think it will be a lot lower for professional software like Mathematica. I think one criteria would be to try to attract those users that we can serve best. A whole new influx of, say, interest from Greece would be hard if no one in the community speeks any Greek. One can either pay for a click or pay by the number of ads seen. I'd rather pay by click. Any thoughts on the best way to target this? Take a look at http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/adwords/jumpstart/09Q3-new.html to see the options. Creating the account is free, though there's a $5 one-off fee for actually taking out the ads. You can read a lot more, and experiment with keywords once you have an account. I suspect it needs more than £30 ($48) to make any serious impact, but it would be interesting to see what happens. I believe Harald Schilly did some experiments along these lines a year or two ago. Might be interesting to see what was learned there. - 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
Yes, I have an assumption that (at some point) just about everything worth (undefined) exploitation will be exploited. Time between invention and exploitation... variable. Obviously SOMEONE has to be first and it is my opinion that if nobody has (yet) jumped in to do sage support then it has been unattractive to those who have considered it so far. I have also assumed that you (William in particular, but others who teach and are close to the development) would be aware if any of your students are supporting sage ex-curricular. Undergrads do this sort of thing, post grads too. Some quit their studies and make their zillions while the (particular) iron is hot (-: A few web searches for sage support and similar terms might turn up some moonlighters, or nothing in addition to the forums and docs. I don't think there is evidence before us, either in support of or against a market for sage support/service. -Original Message- From: William Stein wst...@gmail.com Sent: Feb 26, 2011 1:55 AM To: sage-devel@googlegroups.com Cc: RegB 2regburg...@earthlink.net Subject: Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers. On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 6:41 AM, RegB 2regburg...@earthlink.net wrote: I don't know free market theory at all well - at all for that matter. It would SEEM that if market pull exists it would have shown itself by now, e.g. enterprising (3rd party) individuals would be selling per incident and/or per year contracts to do little more than search the docs and forums for answers to users' questions and difficulties. I know this became a cottage industry with Microsoft Windows somewhen around Win95 and the small ads for Win7 persist. Sage IS much more specialized and a much smaller market, but surely SOMEONE would be offering installation support and 1st tier answers quite independent of the sage group if a market for it existed (?). Your argument above seems to be that any market worth exploiting is already being exploited. That makes little sense to me. Sometimes (often) companies succeed commercially precisely by being the first to enter a new market. You're also assuming that if somebody is offering Sage support in exchange for money, then we would know about it. This isn't necessarily the case. Perhaps the docs and forums are just too good (-: I understand the policy issues of commercial IT groups, but in reality they don't actually get much fixed (off-shore or on- shore). Promises of a fix in the next release maybe, but that usually just brings a new batch of bugs and they DO know this. I don't understand this (I'm not saying it's wrong -- it just doesn't make sense to me). -- William On Feb 25, 6:16 am, David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: On 24 February 2011 17:28, William Stein wst...@gmail.com wrote: I'm also curious about honest *opinions* about how people in the Sage community would feel about a company making potentially gobs of money selling support contracts? What balance between profit and giving back to the community would be appropriate? What services might be offensive, and what would be OK? People are going to make money from Sage. There is as you know a book being published on Sage. Both the publisher and the author will make money from it. Yet personally I see that as the best thing that could happen to Sage. As for the issue I raised as support contracts, then the following might be a method which would not irritate anyone, so has almost zero probability of losing any Sage developers. Use the money only to 1) Pay for extra hardware. I don't know if you have UPSs, but that would increase the uptime. 2) Pay for advertising Sage in maths journals, New Scientist, or if deemed appropriate, anywhere where the 4 M's are advertised. 3) Pay for targeted advertisements on Google - Mathematica, MATLAB, Maple might be nice keywords. Do *not* pay any individual Sage developer or a mathematician to work on some aspect of Sage, as that could potentially cause a bit of bad feeling. One could sink an endless amount of money into advertising. Make the accounts public. State the number of contracts sold (obviously not to who), and disclose how the money has been spent - X to Google, Y for hard disks, Z for UPS's etc. Personally, I don't feel the amount of money raised would be huge. But the fact commercial support was available, could make Sage more attractive to commercial customers. I believe if the money was not payed to any individual developer, then other developers would not mind providing the support for no cost. (Count me as one). * I'm curious if something like sagenb.org, but with Google ads, would be offensive. I could see somebody starting a small business that is just public notebook servers that also have ads. Personally I have no objection. Even a Paypal donate button might be a good idea. I haven't personally made up my mind about any of this. It's
Re: [sage-devel] Including GPLv3+ code in Sage (2)
On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 15:20:36 + David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: http://mercurial.selenic.com/about/ says Mercurial is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2. If one clicks the link to the license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt it says GPL 2, with no mention of GPLv2+, or any later version, so I'm unsure how you arrive at that. The Pari page has a link to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html which is GPL 3, but the source code has a COPYING file that starts: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 So I'm unsure how you arrive at either of those conclusions, though the Pari case is confusing. Excuse me, but wouldn't it be better to just ask the upstream developers of the packages of interest to clear this ambiguity and to fix the mismatch between the website info (which is likely to be more up-to-date) and the source codes? And by the way, FSF seems to provide some help in resolving license-related issues including licenses compliance as far as I know: http://www.fsf.org/licensing Maybe they could also help clearing up the questions regarding GPLv3 licensing? Regards, Vladimir - v...@ukr.net -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Including GPLv3+ code in Sage (2)
On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 15:20:36 + David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: http://mercurial.selenic.com/about/ says Mercurial is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2. If one clicks the link to the license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt it says GPL 2, with no mention of GPLv2+, or any later version, so I'm unsure how you arrive at that. The Pari page has a link to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html which is GPL 3, but the source code has a COPYING file that starts: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 So I'm unsure how you arrive at either of those conclusions, though the Pari case is confusing. Excuse me, but wouldn't it be better to just ask the upstream developers of the packages of interest to clear this ambiguity and to fix the mismatch between the website info (which is likely to be more up-to-date) and the source codes? And by the way, FSF seems to provide some help in resolving license-related issues including licenses compliance as far as I know: http://www.fsf.org/licensing Maybe they could also help clearing up the questions regarding GPLv3 licensing? Regards, Vladimir - v...@ukr.net -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: How to target Mathematica on Google - I'll pay !!!
I'm fine with spending a bit of money on advertising, but it does seem odd to me to particularly single out a competitor. Terms like math software could be useful. Yes. Though I suppose in theory Dave can spend his pounds any way he wishes :) -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
Two comments: If you're going to advertise, you should look at NCTM and MAA publications. Not as many will want to use as in research mathematics, but many will want it for personal use, and most will be teaching at least some courses where it's a drop-in replacement for other options. I could see joint advertising with Geogebra as being useful in NCTM... With regard to people being paid to work on Sage, I imagine this is (other than Sage Days, where there is support but not pay) I would imagine it is almost always with a very specific grant-supported item, right? Which probably the most qualified or interested person is doing. If the money isn't there, it's hard to feel hurt. But perhaps there's more to it than that. +++ But honestly I don't think that the money is to be made for Sage (yet) for commercial support, precisely for the reasons that a few people stated; R and numpy/Enthought have very targeted audiences, and why would someone ask for support for Sage when they could just buy support for the piece they actually needed? For now, the academic market has to be the big target, until someone tells us how they need Sage's pieces to work together in an industrial setting (as presumably, Maple and Mma, and obviously Matlab, are used). -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: How to target Mathematica on Google - I'll pay !!!
On 02/26/11 09:33 PM, kcrisman wrote: I'm fine with spending a bit of money on advertising, but it does seem odd to me to particularly single out a competitor. Terms like math software could be useful. maths software seems less useful to me. Sage is already #5 on Google if you search for that. Hardly worth paying money to advertise if you are already #5. In contrast, when searching for Mathematica, the first hit with Sage in the name is around #50, which is a comparison of Mathematica vs Sage - one where the author clearly considers Mathematica much better. http://jameswharris.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/mathematica-versus-sage/ However, there are sponsored ads for both Maple Mathcad if one searches for Mathematica. (I had to use Mathcad when working at Marconi, and hated it. Thankfully I had Mathematica at home and could connect via ssh to it, rather than use Mathcad) I have set this up, and paid £30.00. Set for English, French and German languages, and world wide coverage. It will take a bit of time for the payment to be processed, and since I've set this as personal rather than business, it has to be approved by Google first. It should generate 2-4 hits/day and should run for about 30 days, as I've put an approximate maximum spend of £1.00/day. (The actual spend can be a little higher or lower than this). Yes. Though I suppose in theory Dave can spend his pounds any way he wishes :) -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? Dave -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On 02/26/11 09:44 PM, kcrisman wrote: But honestly I don't think that the money is to be made for Sage (yet) for commercial support, precisely for the reasons that a few people stated; R and numpy/Enthought have very targeted audiences, and why would someone ask for support for Sage when they could just buy support for the piece they actually needed? I do agree. I don't see there being much (if any) money in supporting Sage. But I do think a lack of the availability of commercial support would further reduce the chances of it ever happening. For now, the academic market has to be the big target, until someone tells us how they need Sage's pieces to work together in an industrial setting (as presumably, Maple and Mma, and obviously Matlab, are used). I don't see this happening until there are more tools for industrial users. For statistics, they would be better just using R alone. Things like number theory are interesting academically, but don't have a huge interest to industrial users. Where I think industrial users could be attracted is the opportunity to collaborate on documents with others in remote locations. I was in the position once of working with a university in Germany, an aircraft manufacturer in Germany and a Swiss company. * German university used MATLAB and Labiew * Aircraft manufacturer used MATLAB * Swiss company used Excel * I used Mathematica. We shared results, but with different software, it was not as easy as it could have been. Sharing data on a web-based interface would have been quite attractive. Being able to discuss ideas on the phone, and regenerate the data for others to see in almost real time would have been quite nice. That's something you can't do with any of the other tools. It was actually quite useful for two people to analyse the results - one with Mathematica and another with MATLAB. Had there been *relevant* bugs in the software we used, comparing results should have highlighted this. In contrast, when we did get different results, it was always due to someone making a different assumption about the experimental data than someone else. Of course there are bugs in MATLAB and Mathematica, but we never uncovered any that affected our results. -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? Dave -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: How to target Mathematica on Google - I'll pay !!!
In contrast, when searching for Mathematica, the first hit with Sage in the name is around #50, which is a comparison of Mathematica vs Sage - one where the author clearly considers Mathematica much better. http://jameswharris.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/mathematica-versus-sage/ Though OT to this thread, people should read this. It's actually very poignant, read the right way - almost a love story to computational learning of math, and a passionate plea to make this capability easily available to anyone who could also be thus inspired. And it also hits home the points about both cost and things like Windows and slickness; these things really do matter - some benefit Sage, some Mma, and presumably others other systems. It reminds me of some people in contested elections, who really honestly like both candidates, and want to support the underdog, but just can't tear themselves away from the one that has the more polished message and that they are more familiar with. (And no, I am making no direct comparisons with Sage or Mma and any candidates in any actual election - only an analogy with what sometimes happens with individual voters.) - kcrisman -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On Feb 25, 10:52 pm, William Stein wst...@gmail.com wrote: 2) Pay for advertising Sage in maths journals, New Scientist, or if deemed appropriate, anywhere where the 4 M's are advertised. b) Is 2) something that will annoy anybody reading this? I could see somebody being annoyed that valuable Sage money is being spent on advertising. (I personally think advertising is a good idea.) Do you have good reasons for thinking that? Not that you need them or need to share them. I am just wondering. I would personally like to see sage develop into a platform that I can use for my research needs. When I look at other programs that fit in that category (magma, kant/kash, pari, singular, gap, python, gcc), I notice that none of those feel the need to advertise. Is there something that sage might gain from advertising that those other programs wouldn't? Are those other projects missing opportunities? -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
I don't have much of a sense about how much such advertising costs, but intuitively I'm pretty sure that our booths at the AMS meetings are extremely cost-effective in comparison. If possible we should try to have booths at other similar meetings in the future. I'm planning on going to the ICIAM in Vancouver this year (http:// www.iciam2011.com), but I was not organized enough to think about getting exhibition space. -Marshall On Feb 26, 12:13 pm, John Cremona john.crem...@gmail.com wrote: Surely advertising in academic places such as AMS Notices, LMS newsletter, and similar, would be cheaper than commercial publications, and also reach people more likely to use Sage and become developers? John -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: How to target Mathematica on Google - I'll pay !!!
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 6:26 PM, kcrisman kcris...@gmail.com wrote: In contrast, when searching for Mathematica, the first hit with Sage in the name is around #50, which is a comparison of Mathematica vs Sage - one where the author clearly considers Mathematica much better. http://jameswharris.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/mathematica-versus-sage/ Though OT to this thread, people should read this. It's actually very poignant, read the right way - almost a love story to computational learning of math, and a passionate plea to make this capability easily available to anyone who could also be thus inspired. And it also hits home the points about both cost and things like Windows and slickness; these things really do matter - some benefit Sage, some Mma, and presumably others other systems. It reminds me of some people in contested elections, who really honestly like both candidates, and want to support the underdog, but just can't tear themselves away from the one that has the more polished message and that they are more familiar with. (And no, I am making no direct comparisons with Sage or Mma and any candidates in any actual election - only an analogy with what sometimes happens with individual voters.) Interestingly, his only significant complaint about Sage is that it isn't easy to use as a Windows user. Which is a totally valid complaint given the state of using Sage on Windows right now, but that was the main obstruction. - 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On Sat, 2011-02-26 at 20:09 -0800, Nils Bruin wrote: On Feb 25, 10:52 pm, William Stein wst...@gmail.com wrote: 2) Pay for advertising Sage in maths journals, New Scientist, or if deemed appropriate, anywhere where the 4 M's are advertised. b) Is 2) something that will annoy anybody reading this? I could see somebody being annoyed that valuable Sage money is being spent on advertising. (I personally think advertising is a good idea.) Do you have good reasons for thinking that? Not that you need them or need to share them. I am just wondering. I would personally like to see sage develop into a platform that I can use for my research needs. When I look at other programs that fit in that category (magma, kant/kash, pari, singular, gap, python, gcc), I notice that none of those feel the need to advertise. Is there something that sage might gain from advertising that those other programs wouldn't? Are those other projects missing opportunities? Well, missing opportunities has a lot to do with project goals. If you are advertising, what is it you are advertising? Are you trying to get more developers? Why not use sourceforge, etc to post help requests? Are you trying to get more users? Why not use a direct phone/mail campaign to your likely targets, which for Sage would be other schools and peers at other schools. A table at the math conferences is a great idea and you should continue that. If you are advertising to attract money then what would your ad copy be about? Money only goes where it can grow. Why would someone invest in Sage if it is not already a commercial entity? I am a little unclear about the financial growth potential of any open source computational mathematics package. What is the business plan? What is the elevator pitch? What are the 3 year payback goals? Is it 1) advertise 2)... 3) profit! If you are advertising to attract attention then Google might not be the best place. Most universities probably already have MMA and Maple so professors and students know about them. If they are using these tools in class they are probably already aware of what is available. I know that when I taught, say compilers, I reviewed pretty much every compiler textbook I could find. I doubt that a professor is going to be swayed by a Google ad. I could be wrong in an individual instance but less likely to be wrong in the general case. Are you advertising to a particular niche market? For instance, Mathcad is very engineering oriented and has a lot of special purpose packages such as a way to get GPIB data off your spiffy HP equipment. Lab guys love it and will pay for this ability. Sage has no GPIB support. Some projects, like Axiom, are not missing opportunities since there is nothing about the project goals that would make a Google ad relevant. What Sage project goals require ads? Is Sage really ready to compete head-to-head with MMA and Maple? Would Sage know what to do with ten thousand end-users (students) demanding support? Personally I would love to see Sage win big because I fear the dark ages that will occur when MMA and Maple disappear. You might not think this could happen but how many companies do you know that are 50 years old? And what ever happened to Macsyma (Symbolics died but you can still buy it for DOS). What about Derive? (TI bought it, rewrote it into C++ but refused to release the original Lisp code to me). Reduce? (Tony Hearn released the code as open source but I don't know who is maintaining it). Axiom was one of the commercial big three with MMA and Maple. When MMA and Maple (recently bought by a company in Japan) go under where will computational mathematics be? Will MMA and Maple become open source? Who will maintain them? Who but the original authors could understand their internals? What happens to all of those thousands of algorithms? So I hope that you advertise well. I hope you start a company. I hope you all get rich and famous. But I also think that there needs to be a bit more thought about exactly what it is you would advertise and what you are trying to achieve by it. Tim Daly -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Support contracts for commercial customers.
On Feb 26, 5:08 pm, Dr. David Kirkby david.kir...@onetel.net wrote: Things like number theory are interesting academically, but don't have a huge interest to industrial users. I guess RSA public-key cryptography is not very important to banks, the military, diplomats wishing to keep cables secret from WikiLeaks, and little 'ol e-commerce sites like Amazon.com. ;-) -- 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
