Re: Another point about Mathematica 8.0
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg116427] Re: Another point about Mathematica 8.0
- From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
- Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:32:40 -0500 (EST)
Re licensing: have you ever signed a rental agreement for a tool at a rental store? (True, it doesn't tell you what you can do with it; but you're giving away lots of rights when you sign it in case there's damage to it or damage/injury caused by it...) Re proprietary product: The trick is to get all the really, really, really bright people with diverse mathematical, graphical, computer, design, and documentation skills: they tend to want to get paid so they can live. There is in progress lately, of course, one open-source "computer algebra system". But as a unified system and a system with the diversity of capabilities of mathematica -- and even what's involved just to install it under Windows -- it falls well short of what Mathematica has to offer. But if you're committed to such a project, perhaps you should contribute your time to the existing project. On 2/14/2011 4:28 AM, AES wrote: > > Some of these peculiarities stem from the fact that a software app is > basically, in fact, a _tool_. Users buy this tool, just like they buy a > hammer, or a table saw, to _do_ things -- make and build things -- with > it. > > ...So, we've gotten into in all this "licensing" idiocy with software: we > users allegedly don't "buy" the app, we "license" it, and can only use > it to make things that the vendor has licensed us to make. > > This is, of course, garbage -- legal garbage, but garbage. Imagine > going to the hardware store to buy a table saw, or vacuum cleaner, or a > paint sprayer, and being asked by the hardware store to sign a several > thousand word license saying just what you're allowed to do with those > appliances, for whom, and where.... > A second problem is that Wolfram, Inc., is in some ways a very peculiar > organization. It makes an absolutely superb and more or less unique > product, but a product that has an immense impact on the intellectual > and academic and scholarly life of our society. Yet, it's a totally > private organization, with very little public reporting, very little > public guidance, very little regulation, very little transparency -- and > in some ways very little direct competition for what it does. > > My solution? It's long past time that we have a true _open source_ > competitor for Mathematica (it might be called "Wikimatica"). One can > only hope that the academic and scholarly and IT communities will > eventually get around to going at this task. > -- Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305