Re: Digest for amrita-ebook@googlegroups.com - 1 Message in 1 Topic

[Hans Hornung]

Matei:

That sounds like a great idea, and I would be happy to join and contribute, although I am not very confident that my contributions would be of great value. I think I could definitely learn a lot from it, as I think all of us would.

Hans.

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 3:27 AM, <amrita-ebo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

  Today's Topic Summary

Group: http://groups.google.com/group/amrita-ebook/topics

• amrita workshop [1 Update]

 Topic: amrita workshop

"Matei Radulescu" <ma...@uottawa.ca> Sep 22 03:57PM -0400 ^

 
All,
 
I am starting a new thread following James' last post (August-25-10
10:09 AM).
 
To echo James' comments, I think the time is ripe for pulling together
as a community and addressing the issues raised by James.
 
The first thing I would like to propose is to set up a long-intended
workshop, where the AMRITA users could attend to especially address
these issues raised by James. This would take the form of a hands-on
seminar, using James as chief architect and us as his apprentices.
 
At this point, most of us have scripts meant to use amr_sol for various
inert and reactive gasdynamics problems. Perhaps by the seminar, some
of these scripts can be cleaned up and made such that they reproduce the
results of one of our published papers in a self-contained manner, in
the same spirit as Short&Quirk JFM example posted by James
(January-29-10).
 
At this point, I would like to see who among the users of AMRITA would
be interested in such a workshop and up to the challenge to clean up our
scripts and become more fluent in exchanging the ideas generated in our
published papers to the others, so we can build upon what some of us
have done.
 
Matei

 

---Original Message-----
From: amrita...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:amrita...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of James Quirk
Sent: August-25-10 10:09 AM
To: Roger Mason
Cc: amrita...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [BULK] Re: problem installing on Fedora 13
 
Roger,
 
 
> James, I won't proceed further with adding amrita to the T2 package
> database, my install will be independent and consistent with the
amrita
> license (of course). I hope your arm recovers soon.
Thanks, but I'm afraid 30+ years of typing is catching up with me.
I'm only writing here, as I do not want you, or others, to get
the wrong impression, on something which is quite important.
 
The fact of the matter is that you, and all AMRITA's users, are
in violation of the software licence agreement. The relevant clause
from $AMRITA/USER_LICENCE reads:
****************************************************************
THIS LICENCE WILL AUTOMATICALLY EXPIRE NINETY DAYS
FROM THE AGREEMENT DATE LOGGED WITH THE AUTHOR.
 
AT WHICH STAGE, TO GAIN A ROLL-OVER LICENCE YOU MUST
PROVIDE THE AMRITA SCRIPT REPOSITORY WITH A SET OF
WORKING, DOCUMENTED SCRIPTS.
 
THEREAFTER, TO KEEP THE ROLL-OVER LICENCE INTACT
YOUR SOLE RESPONSIBILITY IS TO INSTALL EACH NEW VERSION
OF AMRITA AS AND WHEN IT APPEARS.
 
A GRACE PERIOD OF 30 DAYS IS ALLOWED FOR EACH UPGRADE.
 
QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS LICENCE AGREEMENT SHOULD BE
DIRECTED TO he...@amrita-cfd.org
****************************************************************
 
I do not enforce this licence, and might not even be able
to legally. But it was not constructed from a legal perspective.
It construction hinges on the notion of computational scholarship.
 
A student might read the above and think: "that Quirk he's a right
#$%@!"
But if he/she analysed the text and made the association with
"reproduible
research" the text would take on a different meaning. Specifically, if a
 
student cannot produce a working/documented script then he/she cannot
fulfill the scientific obligation of making his/her work checkable by
third-parties. Let me be clear, computations are not like physical
experiments, and so computational repeatability on its own does not
guarantee correctness. It is, however, a pre-requisite for party A
checking party B's work, and vice versa. Therefore it must not be
ignored.
 
Regarding the time clauses, a student who pondered them would quickly
realise that at some point they will need to rely on me for specialist
support. So the 90 day clause is essentially a means of filtering out
time
wasters, while the 30 day clause has to do with ensuring all users have
the same base system, which helps with the idea of computational
repeatability.
 
What alarms me is that over the years, not one student has
contributed an example that leaves a public legacy for the others
to benefit from.
 
Here it's important to understand that I don't expect a worked example
to
appear by magic. The idea is the student has a stab at producing
something
and then we all iterate so as to improve the quality of the product. The
 
purpose of such an exercise is to get the student and other interested
parties to the point where they are self-sufficient.
 
Another point I find alarming is that this group was explicitly set up
so
that AMRITA's users could form a self-help group and be less reliant on
my
continued good will, which owing to physical frailities cannot continue
indefinitely. The group was not set up to promote either myself or my
software. Unfortunatey, it is painfully clear that a self-help community
 
has not formed, and if I don't answer a question, said question goes
unanswerd.
 
Anyhow, the above has only just scratched the surface, in terms of the
issues that drove the licence and AMRITA's construction in general. But
I
hope that people can see what I'm driving at. If not, they might care to
 
revisit the ICDERS papers. And in the case of someone like Brian, he can
 
ponder how much easier his life would be now, if the students back in
1999
had embraced AMRITA-the-computational-philosophy.
 
Said philosophy ultimately rests on the concept of reciprocation,
which is in short supply. But instead of dwelling on the mistakes
of the past, does anyone have any thoughts on how to shape the future?
 
 
James
 
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[James Quirk]

Hans,

On Fri, 24 Sep 2010, Hans Hornung wrote:

> Matei:
>
> That sounds like a great idea, and I would be happy to join and contribute,
> although I am not very confident that my contributions would be of great
> value. I think I could definitely learn a lot from it, as I think all of us
> would.

Your contribution may not be valuable in terms of raw software content,
but it would be invaluable in terms of how you have used the system to
investigate physical phenomena. I won't be able to think about a workshop
until after Nov 5 as my spare time is currently taken up with:
http://royalsociety.org/education-policy/projects/
Specifically, I'm annotating their call for evidence. But when
I'm finished Matei and company should have a better idea
of what AMRITA is and where it could get to with their help.

James

>
> Hans.