Re: Mathematica 7.0.1.0 and some General Comments
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg97384] Re: Mathematica 7.0.1.0 and some General Comments
- From: Mariano Suárez-Alvarez <mariano.suarezalvarez at gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:19:01 -0500 (EST)
- References: <goqphr$lt2$1@smc.vnet.net> <gp5fou$9nr$1@smc.vnet.net>
On Mar 11, 7:21 am, mike.honeychu... at gmail.com wrote: > 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. Well, if you come up with a proof of a theorem which depends on non-trivial Mathematica code to do non-trivial computations, in what way can you possibly say that you know how the proof works, if *you* yourself, the author of the proof, do not know what Mathematica is really doing? Using closed-source code simply goes against the very spirit of open review which is essential to the scientific endeavor. There was a recent discussion in this subject on the AMS Notices, which you can get at <http://www.ams.org/notices/200710/tx071001279p.pdf>. -- m
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