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Re: Re: Mathematica 7.0.1.0 and some General Comments

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg97360] Re: [mg97324] Re: Mathematica 7.0.1.0 and some General Comments
  • From: peter <plindsay.0 at gmail.com>
  • Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:14:41 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <goqphr$lt2$1@smc.vnet.net> <gp5fou$9nr$1@smc.vnet.net>

Its the danger of being "locked-in" to a product that people are concerned
about. Changing chalk brand isn't going to ruin your Maths day, unless the
chalk is rubbish of course. One can imagine there is some risk to getting
locked-in to Mathematica or any other proprietary brand competitor. Even
with C++, Fortran etc you can get so dependent on proprietary libraries,
which may be "black-boxes", that you'd be struggling to cope if you had to
change brand ?

2009/3/11 <mike.honeychurch at gmail.com>

> On Mar 10, 5:35 am, Sebastian Meznaric <mezna... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't think Mathematica should replace mathematics. It is an
> > important tool, but very importantly, a commercial closed-source tool.
> > It costs a great deal of money and you do not know what it is doing
> > (although most of the time it gives correct results). Only systems
> > that can be considered to generally replace Mathematics have got to be
> > open source (although I admit I do not use any). If at least the basis
> > of Mathematica was made open-source with paid-for support from Wolfram
> > that would make things a lot better. As it stands, we should not chain
> > people to commercial software.
>
> Other than people who use pencils and paper, or blackboards and
> chalk*, everyone is "chained" to commercial products in their
> workplaces. We need to "free" our minds a bit from the idea that
> software should somehow be an exception to everything else that occurs
> in our workplaces. Or alternatively perhaps someone can explain to me
> why software should be any different to scientific equipment, cars,
> dishwashers... I cannot use an open source mass spectrometer, drive an
> open source car [although GM and Ford are verging on open source :),
> or at least maybe publicly owned soon] etc.
>
> Mike
>
> *these are also commercial products of course
>
>


-- 
Peter Lindsay



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