"SageMath will replace Maple"

[William A Stein]

One tiny step toward our mission statement...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jori Mäntysalo
Date: Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 1:29 AM
Subject: Sage and supercomputer


Might be of interest to know. Taito is the second biggest computer in
Finland, 17704 computing cores in total.

--
Jori Mäntysalo

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 11:13:51 +0200 (EET)
Subject: [taito-users] SageMath will replace Maple on Taito at December 1, 2017

Dear Taito user,

There will be changes in the available mathematics software on Taito.
The usage of Maple will end at November 30, 2017 and it
will be removed from the CSC's scientific software collection. The open source
software SageMath (http://www.sagemath.org/index.html,
https://research.csc.fi/-/sagemath) will replace Maple.


--
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

[saad khalid]

This is awesome. Any information on why they're switching?

[rjf]

I assume that they decided there was not enough use of Maple to

justify the expense of the license in CSC.  The sentence indicating

 that Sage will "replace" Maple is probably a simplification of 

something like ... 

"Those (few?) current users of Maple on our computer system may

find that Sage [SageMath], a software package we don't know too much

about, might satisfy their needs."

I think that someone with a considerable investment

in personally-coded programs in the Maple language would not

find that Sage is nearly a drop-in replacement for Maple.  Also

be cheaper and more effective to license Maple for a workstation

for those who really need it.  It is not entirely clear from the

Taito website, but it seems that a workstation version of Mathematica

is available. Also they seem to have a Magma license. 

Beyond that, I don't know if they have any stance about free/open source or not.

In a larger perspective, I think that dropping Maple is not a positive sign.

  Here is an apparently

major scientific computing establishment that has decreased its

investment in symbolic mathematical computing, presumably for

lack of interest.

I think it is not so much that they are "switching"  but disinvesting.

What would be a positive sign is if CSC showed a particular

commitment to computer algebra systems or Sage by

(a)  directing research funding toward such software development

  and/or

(b) Offering specialized in-house consultation for CSC users

interested in Maple or its alternatives.

  and/or

(c) supporting subscriptions to off-site services (SageMathCloud

which now appears to be CoCalc ?)  for its user community.

https://cocalc.com/policies/pricing.html

I have not conducted a survey on the topic, but my limited

observation  is that Mathematica, not Maple, has a larger

foothold in "scientific computing" establishments. Whether

this is an actual endorsement of the quality of the software

or a tribute to the dominance of physicists in national

laboratories or academia, or both, I cannot say.

RJF