Re: Opportunities and Player Pro
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg104508] Re: Opportunities and Player Pro
- From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
- Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 17:59:05 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: Stanford University
- References: <hcbi0f$jn9$1@smc.vnet.net> <20910958.1256889652954.JavaMail.root@n11> <hcgmus$d0m$1@smc.vnet.net> <hcjiu0$jmi$1@smc.vnet.net>
Some time back, when earlier go-arounds of these discussions were going
around, I actually carefully read some of the online "licenses" that are
associated with all these various Players and online demo conversion
processes and various "home" and academic versions of Mathematica -- all
the terms to which you are supposedly committing yourself, and in some
cases, your organization or employer or school (are people actually
authorized to commit their organizations?)-- including all the links in
these licenses leading to further stuff that is presumably part of what
you're committing yourself to.
And I decided: These people are nuts. ("Looney" was the lovely word
another Canadian poster used about the same time).
Take the word "academic", for example. I'm a (retired) academic.
Suppose I do some engineering-oriented research that's heavily dependent
on Mathematica calculations (Mathematica can be an incredibly great
program, at times) and then, as happens, get invited to go to some other
academic institution, all expenses paid, to talk about it -- and to live
demo it from Mathematica in my laptop. That's clearly academic, right?
But suppose -- as happens -- that this invitation also includes a
(modest, but taxable) honorarium, in addition to expenses. Still
academic? (so far as Wolfram is concerned?) Or partly commercial?
What if -- as happens -- the invitation comes from a conference, with
lots of nonacademic participants? Or even a trade show, organized by a
profit-making professional organization, with mostly nonacademic
participants. Still academic? What if -- as happens -- the invitation
comes from a large company, that does some research, but is absolutely
totally commercial? Am I violating my license for "academic" use?
What if -- as happens -- I subsequently use some of this stuff in a
modest but definitely commercial consulting assignment? (A small part
of my overall use of Mathematica.) Am I violating the license on my
academic or home copy of Mathematica, or the license for a demo?
Is Wolfram seriously going to *enforce* these licenses? (Of course
not.) Is Wolfram going to start stuffing its various products with
booby traps and blockers akin to the madness of the DRM stuff that
prevails in the media world these days? If so, that will be a very sad
day -- and signal the end of any pretense that "Wolfram" and "academic"
should be used in the same sentence.
All the above concerns are just part of the reasons that, however great
a piece of software it may be, I'm not about to build my entire
professional work flow around Mathematica -- and why I'm going to stay
very alert for any substitutes or open-source replacements for
Mathematica.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Re: Opportunities and Player Pro
- From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz@mimuw.edu.pl>
- Re: Re: Opportunities and Player Pro