Sage & reddit: "Mathematica No Longer World's Most Expensive Calculator? "
mabshoff
the sage websites have been getting a couple hundred hits today as
referrals from the above story. It all boils down to (as discussed in
IRC) that MMA now offers a personal edition of MMA for about $300 for
download in the US and Canada. But you can't do research with it
according to the license and it is also 32 bits only :)
Anyway, the following comment is quite interesting:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7uovk/mathematica_no_longer_worlds_most_expensive/c07gnhg
I am not quite sure I would attribute the existence of the personal
edition of MMA to Sage, but I would like to believe that we had at
least part in it by providing competition from the OS side of things.
Cheers,
Michael
Rob Beezer
has struck me the past few months that they seemed much more "engaged"
or "concerned" about the welfare of their users. So I'd been having
some of the same thoughts about SAGE's influence. If not cheaper,
then Mathematica has at least become kinder and gentler, perhaps. ;-)
Rob
On Feb 4, 5:48 am, mabshoff <mabsh...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the sage websites have been getting a couple hundred hits today as
> referrals from the above story. It all boils down to (as discussed in
> IRC) that MMA now offers a personal edition of MMA for about $300 for
> download in the US and Canada. But you can't do research with it
> according to the license and it is also 32 bits only :)
>
> Anyway, the following comment is quite interesting:
>
mabshoff
Hi Rob,
> I still get a lot of education-related email from Mathematica, and it
> has struck me the past few months that they seemed much more "engaged"
> or "concerned" about the welfare of their users. So I'd been having
> some of the same thoughts about SAGE's influence. If not cheaper,
> then Mathematica has at least become kinder and gentler, perhaps. ;-)
do with this offer and it is also all about maximizing the number of
MMA license you can sell. And there is likely a huge market for the
mathematically inclined that are not working in higher education and
no longer students and having them spend $300 on such a MMA license is
a better return than those people either using pirated copies or not
MMA at all. Either way, if Sage is part of making Wolfram, Inc. kinder
and gentler we will all benefit since the more people use CAS the more
potential users for Sage are out there. And Sage's long term goal is
world domination after all :). So is there any MMA mole around here
who could clue us in? At the main 2008 AMS meeting it become clear
that at least the technical folks at Wolfram were well aware of the
existence of Sage, but probably William should comment on that. IIRC
he also had a blog post about the interaction he had at that AMS
meerting with Wolfram Inc. and MuPAD.
I would also suspect in general that for Matlab, Maple and MMA the
biggest competition just like for MS are the previous releases of
their software since switching to the competition implies a high cost
for moving working code (regardless whether the new program is open or
not) and that is in the end what we need to overcome to get more users
from the commercial competition.
One more note: In the above thread a Japanese user commented that the
current MMA release sets him back a whopping $4,700 when taking into
account the current exchange rate. The professional release MMA in the
US might seem obscenely expensive, but that one takes the cake. Note
that the Solaris version of MMA is still more expensive than that.
> Rob
Cheers,
Michael
rjf
On Feb 4, 3:26 pm, mabshoff <mabsh...@googlemail.com> wrote:
...
> Well, I still think that the financial crises also has a large part to
> do with this offer
> MMA license you can sell.
licenses. It is about maximizing revenue, short and long term.
Wolfram is running a business.
>And there is likely a huge market for the
> mathematically inclined that are not working in higher education and
> no longer students
There are very few people who are mathematically inclined.
Even among college students who have taken (required) calculus, the
vast majority of
them view that course as a final, painful, and forgettable
experience. Anyone wishing to
tap into a financial bonanza could find many more profitable niches.
Games. Music.
Database applications for <name some business>.
Especially since there are well-established free programs for numeric
and symbolic math.
> and having them spend $300 on such a MMA license is
> a better return than those people either using pirated copies or not
> MMA at all.
sales will simply cannibalize the commercial sales.
>Either way, if Sage is part of making Wolfram, Inc. kinder
> and gentler we will all benefit since the more people use CAS the more
for Mathematica
is probably not Sage, but Matlab.
> potential users for Sage are out there. And Sage's long term goal is
> world domination after all :). So is there any MMA mole around here
> who could clue us in? At the main 2008 AMS meeting it become clear
> that at least the technical folks at Wolfram were well aware of the
> existence of Sage,
doubt that
they are the ones setting marketing strategy.
> but probably William should comment on that. IIRC
> he also had a blog post about the interaction he had at that AMS
> meerting with Wolfram Inc. and MuPAD.
>
> I would also suspect in general that for Matlab, Maple and MMA the
> biggest competition just like for MS are the previous releases of
> their software since switching to the competition implies a high cost
> for moving working code (regardless whether the new program is open or
> not) and that is in the end what we need to overcome to get more users
> from the commercial competition.
students.
They have not seen Mathematica or Maple or Sage. To get them to be
users, all
you need to do is convince the calculus instructor to use Sage. Of
course most of
these students drop that program regardless. Engineering students may
pick up
Matlab in subsequent courses, since that is more likely to be used in
practice.
>
> One more note: In the above thread a Japanese user commented that the
> current MMA release sets him back a whopping $4,700 when taking into
> account the current exchange rate. The professional release MMA in the
> US might seem obscenely expensive, but that one takes the cake. Note
> that the Solaris version of MMA is still more expensive than that.
example,
any software (or for that matter, Hollywood movie) can expect to sell
between 0 and 1
copy for all of China. Copies 2 through infinity will be pirated
versions.
Japan is probably not like China, but maybe the Japanese support
costs are high
relative to the sales expected.
(Old joke: bear goes into a bar and orders a Bud. The surprised
bartender offers
the bear a bottle of beer, and says "$5 please". The bear takes a
wallet out of its fur and pays it.
The bartender say, "Say, we don't get many bears in here."
The bear says, "At that price, no wonder!".
)
RJF
>
>
William Stein
> On Feb 4, 3:26 pm, mabshoff <mabsh...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Well, I still think that the financial crises also has a large part to
>> do with this offer
>
> Maybe.
>> and it is also all about maximizing the number of
>> MMA license you can sell.
>
> No, I think it is more likely NOT about maximizing the number of
> licenses. It is about maximizing revenue, short and long term.
> Wolfram is running a business.
That makes sense.
>>And there is likely a huge market for the
>> mathematically inclined that are not working in higher education and
>> no longer students
>
> Why do you think so? Can you cite any statistics on this?
>
> There are very few people who are mathematically inclined.
I think he means that of the mathematically inclined people in the
world, a huge number of them are neither working in higher education
or are students. They are engineers, scientists, quantitative
analysts, code breakers, etc.
>> and having them spend $300 on such a MMA license is
>> a better return than those people either using pirated copies or not
>> MMA at all.
>
> I doubt that this is a big market, and that the majority of their
> sales will simply cannibalize the commercial sales.
I wonder -- it seems MMA doesn't agree with that assertion. I have
no opinion personally.
>
>
>>Either way, if Sage is part of making Wolfram, Inc. kinder
>> and gentler we will all benefit since the more people use CAS the more
>
> You are of course welcome to believe this, but the major competition
> for Mathematica
> is probably not Sage, but Matlab.
For many engineering applications Matlab blows Mathematica out of the
water, and I wouldn't even consider Mathematica competition. For
many applications in pure mathematics -- hobbyists, education,
research, combinatorics, number theory, etc. -- I think that
Mathematica is vastly better than Matlab. Apples and Oranges.
>> but probably William should comment on that. IIRC
>> he also had a blog post about the interaction he had at that AMS
>> meerting with Wolfram Inc. and MuPAD.
>>
>> I would also suspect in general that for Matlab, Maple and MMA the
>> biggest competition just like for MS are the previous releases of
>> their software since switching to the competition implies a high cost
>> for moving working code (regardless whether the new program is open or
>> not) and that is in the end what we need to overcome to get more users
>> from the commercial competition.
>
> I think that the mass number of users comes from first-time calculus
> students.
> They have not seen Mathematica or Maple or Sage. To get them to be
> users, all
> you need to do is convince the calculus instructor to use Sage. Of
> course most of
> these students drop that program regardless. Engineering students may
> pick up
> Matlab in subsequent courses, since that is more likely to be used in
> practice.
In the US academic education environment I think your statement above
agrees 100% with what I've seen.
However, I expect that is not the environment Michael is talking about
or that the new Mathematica $300 "Home Version" license is aimed at.
William
William Stein
Associate Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org
kcrisman
the Ms which, though more likely generated because the technology was
there in terms of the Web, perhaps are less restrictive than they
might have been due to open source alternatives. Of course, it could
also just be good marketing :)
There is MapleNet (http://www.maplesoft.com/demo/maplenet.aspx), which
seems to sort of function like the Sage notebook server, except with a
very slowly-loading Java thing of course. A rep at this past JMM
confirmed that, although there would be no technical barrier to it
functioning like the Sage NB server (i.e. unlimited access to a
worksheet), the licensing they provide would require the customer to
restrict access to the number of users (e.g. students) which the
customer has paid for usage. Still, a step in the right direction for
allowing people to use it without knowing how to use it.
webMathematica is similar, doesn't seem to allow access to a general
Mma notebook at this point. The rep at the Mma booth suggested,
however, that there may be some better solution coming in terms of
licensing/payment. What this means is anyone's guess. However, the
fairly recent introduction of functions.wolfram.com, the Integrator,
and the Player/Demonstrations Project certainly make it plausible that
at least another incremental step of that nature could be in the
offing at some point. Since there are already lots of free graphing
programs on the web, perhaps that would be a natural one - but this is
pure speculation.
Anyhow, if the availability of Geogebra, Sage, YACAS, and other more-
or-less web-or-applet-enabled OSS math software has contributed to
this, that is good. Somehow I doubt this effect will ever be
quantifiable (even if real, see previous posts), but the presence of
Sage etc. as *visible* projects should help motivate proprietary
programs to try to stay several steps ahead in all areas - at least in
the eyes of their current customers - which is a salutary effect.
- kcrisman
William Stein
>
> Related to this whole thread, note there are various web options from
> the Ms which, though more likely generated because the technology was
> there in terms of the Web, perhaps are less restrictive than they
> might have been due to open source alternatives. Of course, it could
> also just be good marketing :)
>
> There is MapleNet (http://www.maplesoft.com/demo/maplenet.aspx), which
> seems to sort of function like the Sage notebook server, except with a
> very slowly-loading Java thing of course.
Very very very slow loading... I tried the "integrate app", and it's
still loading over a minute later, and after I've explicitly agreed to
run signed java apps twice. It just came up, but it doesn't work
(there's no way to enter a function). Maybe it is a Firefox or OS X
bug.
The next maplenet thing I tried (special functions) sort of works but
has this big scary message: "Legal Notice: The copyright for this
application is owned by Maplesoft. The application is intended to
demonstrate the use of Maple to solve a particular problem. It has
been made available for product evaluation purposes only and may not
be used in any other context without the express permission of
Maplesoft."
> A rep at this past JMM
> confirmed that, although there would be no technical barrier to it
> functioning like the Sage NB server (i.e. unlimited access to a
> worksheet), the licensing they provide would require the customer to
> restrict access to the number of users (e.g. students) which the
> customer has paid for usage. Still, a step in the right direction for
> allowing people to use it without knowing how to use it.
Those java applets don't look anything like a notebook to me.
> webMathematica is similar, doesn't seem to allow access to a general
> Mma notebook at this point. The rep at the Mma booth suggested,
> however, that there may be some better solution coming in terms of
> licensing/payment. What this means is anyone's guess. However, the
> fairly recent introduction of functions.wolfram.com, the Integrator,
> and the Player/Demonstrations Project certainly make it plausible that
> at least another incremental step of that nature could be in the
> offing at some point. Since there are already lots of free graphing
> programs on the web, perhaps that would be a natural one - but this is
> pure speculation.
>
> Anyhow, if the availability of Geogebra, Sage, YACAS, and other more-
> or-less web-or-applet-enabled OSS math software has contributed to
> this, that is good. Somehow I doubt this effect will ever be
> quantifiable (even if real, see previous posts), but the presence of
> Sage etc. as *visible* projects should help motivate proprietary
> programs to try to stay several steps ahead in all areas - at least in
> the eyes of their current customers - which is a salutary effect.
This is all only good from my perspective if it motivates us as Sage
developers to stay several steps ahead.
-- William
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 4:59 PM, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> You are of course welcome to believe this, but the major competition
>> for Mathematica
>> is probably not Sage, but Matlab.
>
> For many engineering applications Matlab blows Mathematica out of the
> water, and I wouldn't even consider Mathematica competition. For
> many applications in pure mathematics -- hobbyists, education,
> research, combinatorics, number theory, etc. -- I think that
> Mathematica is vastly better than Matlab. Apples and Oranges.
Isn't Matlab, like the open source Octave, SciLab and FreeMat
"knock-offs", a "purely numeric" langauge? They're great tools for easy
interactive computing, but do they do *symbolic* calculation?
I have never used any of them. I do most of my numeric work in R and
have for many years. As an aside, there is a package in the R CRAN
repository that interfaces with the open source symbolic math package Yacas.
> In the US academic education environment I think your statement above
> agrees 100% with what I've seen.
> However, I expect that is not the environment Michael is talking about
> or that the new Mathematica $300 "Home Version" license is aimed at.
I'm not familiar with that version. Is that the "branding" -- a "home
version" of Mathematica? Personally, as a working applied mathematician,
I have not actually bought a licensed symbolic math tool since Derive 6,
which was clocking in at a list price of $200US IIRC when TI stopped
selling it. When I need symbolic capabilities now, I use wxMaxima most
of the time, which has a "Derive-like" UI and has the stuff I care
about, like Laplace transforms, built in. But clearly Sage, which
includes R, is going to be my platform of choice once I learn how to use it.
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
I've never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed.
William Stein
>
> William Stein wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 4:59 PM, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> You are of course welcome to believe this, but the major competition
>>> for Mathematica
>>> is probably not Sage, but Matlab.
>>
>> For many engineering applications Matlab blows Mathematica out of the
>> water, and I wouldn't even consider Mathematica competition. For
>> many applications in pure mathematics -- hobbyists, education,
>> research, combinatorics, number theory, etc. -- I think that
>> Mathematica is vastly better than Matlab. Apples and Oranges.
>
> Isn't Matlab, like the open source Octave, SciLab and FreeMat
> "knock-offs", a "purely numeric" langauge? They're great tools for easy
> interactive computing, but do they do *symbolic* calculation?
Not directly. Matlab did *purchase* MuPAD fairly recently, and they
sell MuPAD as a "Symbolic Toolbox" addon. I used to use the Mupad
<---> Matlab symbolic toolbox thing a decade ago for a job I had once.
But core Matlab is very much numerically oriented.
> I have never used any of them. I do most of my numeric work in R and
> have for many years. As an aside, there is a package in the R CRAN
> repository that interfaces with the open source symbolic math package Yacas.
>
>
>> In the US academic education environment I think your statement above
>> agrees 100% with what I've seen.
>> However, I expect that is not the environment Michael is talking about
>> or that the new Mathematica $300 "Home Version" license is aimed at.
>
> I'm not familiar with that version. Is that the "branding" -- a "home
> version" of Mathematica? Personally, as a working applied mathematician,
> I have not actually bought a licensed symbolic math tool since Derive 6,
> which was clocking in at a list price of $200US IIRC when TI stopped
> selling it. When I need symbolic capabilities now, I use wxMaxima most
> of the time, which has a "Derive-like" UI and has the stuff I care
> about, like Laplace transforms, built in. But clearly Sage, which
> includes R, is going to be my platform of choice once I learn how to use it.
What are some ideas you have about how we could make Sage easier for
_you_ (and people "like you") to learn? How did you learn R?
William
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 9:54 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <zzn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> William Stein wrote:
>>> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 4:59 PM, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> You are of course welcome to believe this, but the major competition
>>>> for Mathematica
>>>> is probably not Sage, but Matlab.
>>> For many engineering applications Matlab blows Mathematica out of the
>>> water, and I wouldn't even consider Mathematica competition. For
>>> many applications in pure mathematics -- hobbyists, education,
>>> research, combinatorics, number theory, etc. -- I think that
>>> Mathematica is vastly better than Matlab. Apples and Oranges.
>> Isn't Matlab, like the open source Octave, SciLab and FreeMat
>> "knock-offs", a "purely numeric" langauge? They're great tools for easy
>> interactive computing, but do they do *symbolic* calculation?
>
> Not directly. Matlab did *purchase* MuPAD fairly recently, and they
> sell MuPAD as a "Symbolic Toolbox" addon. I used to use the Mupad
> <---> Matlab symbolic toolbox thing a decade ago for a job I had once.
> But core Matlab is very much numerically oriented.
Interesting. MuPAD had a "free as in beer" subset that was once
distributed with the SciLab package, but nobody I know ever used MuPAD.
You're the first.
> What are some ideas you have about how we could make Sage easier for
> _you_ (and people "like you") to learn? How did you learn R?
I learned R by downloading it and reading the introductory manual that
came with it. I have forgotten what release it was, but it was early
2000 when I did that. I now have most of the base books that go with R,
the reference books for the packages I use heavily like "sm", "quantreg"
and "rggobi", and a few other statistics books that have libraries
associated in R/S. And I'm still learning things about it. R is an
amazing achievement.
As far as Sage is concerned, I think I just need to sit down with it and
learn what's in it. I don't do a lot of discrete math, I don't do
crypto, group or ring theory or any of the other "specialized"
calculations that packages like Pari or Singular are good at. My main
area these days is continuous-time Markov chains and related areas like
process algebras and Petri nets. A good high-speed arbitrary-precision
rational arithmetic package, Laplace transforms, and a programming
language are about all I need. I can *almost* do everything in Ruby. :)
mabshoff
On Feb 4, 10:18 pm, Minh Nguyen <nguyenmi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 4:59 PM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
Hi Minh,
> AFAIK Matlab can also interface to the Maple kernel in order to make
> use of Maple's symbolic computation features. The following book has
> made use of this Matlab <----> Maple interfacing in introducing
> applications of abstract algebra to undergraduate students:
>
> Richard E. Klima, Neil Sigmon, Ernest Stitzinger
> Applications of Abstract Algebra with Maple and MATLABhttp://www.amazon.com/Applications-Abstract-Algebra-Discrete-Mathemat...
Yes, before MuPAD was bought by MathWorks the symbolic toolbox in
Matlab was based on Maple. You can still buy it even now since they
are interested in not breaking old code.
<SNIP>
> > What are some ideas you have about how we could make Sage easier for
> > _you_ (and people "like you") to learn? How did you learn R?
>
> to install R optional packages. I'm aware that there's work on this
> front in trac. My current project requires me to use R in addition to
> a number of R packages. A few weeks ago I tried to install an R
> package using the Sage <-----> R interface, but it failed miserably. I
> just wanted to install a local R package, i.e. not installing via
> connection to CRAN or one of its mirrors. I like R, but I also like to
> use other built-in functionalities of Sage as these save me a lot of
> pain in re-inventing a number of things. So I very much look forward
> to the official release of Sage 3.3 in order to play with the Sage
> <-----> R interface.
The main issue here seems to be related to the use of Fortran runtime
(R does not deal with g95 too well) and some env variable issues IIRC.
If you get me the problem logs again I can take a look since I only
vaguely recall the problem. You might want to open a new thread for
that.
> --
> Regards
> Minh Van Nguyen
Cheers,
Michael
William Stein
<zzn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> William Stein wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 9:54 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <zzn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> William Stein wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 4:59 PM, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> You are of course welcome to believe this, but the major competition
>>>>> for Mathematica
>>>>> is probably not Sage, but Matlab.
>>>> For many engineering applications Matlab blows Mathematica out of the
>>>> water, and I wouldn't even consider Mathematica competition. For
>>>> many applications in pure mathematics -- hobbyists, education,
>>>> research, combinatorics, number theory, etc. -- I think that
>>>> Mathematica is vastly better than Matlab. Apples and Oranges.
>>> Isn't Matlab, like the open source Octave, SciLab and FreeMat
>>> "knock-offs", a "purely numeric" langauge? They're great tools for easy
>>> interactive computing, but do they do *symbolic* calculation?
>>
>> Not directly. Matlab did *purchase* MuPAD fairly recently, and they
>> sell MuPAD as a "Symbolic Toolbox" addon. I used to use the Mupad
>> <---> Matlab symbolic toolbox thing a decade ago for a job I had once.
>> But core Matlab is very much numerically oriented.
>
> Interesting. MuPAD had a "free as in beer" subset that was once
> distributed with the SciLab package, but nobody I know ever used MuPAD.
> You're the first.
That was a typo on my part -- I meant the "Maple <--> Matlab" symbolic toolbox.
--
Ronan Paixão
> > You are of course welcome to believe this, but the major competition
> > for Mathematica
> > is probably not Sage, but Matlab.
>
> For many engineering applications Matlab blows Mathematica out of the
> water, and I wouldn't even consider Mathematica competition. For
> many applications in pure mathematics -- hobbyists, education,
> research, combinatorics, number theory, etc. -- I think that
> Mathematica is vastly better than Matlab. Apples and Oranges.
That's right indeed. Most engineering schools around here use Matlab.
Unfortunately what I see out there (or out here) is that usually the
school tries to buy a license but the students tend to use pirated
copies. I don't know if MathWorks uses the same strategy as Microsoft of
letting some people pirate and getting people addicted so as to buy the
software after leaving school.
Actually, some specialties use Scilab too. I for one swim against the
tide and use pylab with numpy.
> >
> > I think that the mass number of users comes from first-time calculus
> > students.
Around here students are not allowed to use software for calculus stuff.
Maybe only for homework without the teacher's knowledge. Note: I can
only say that about the undergraduate Engineering courses in my college.
> > They have not seen Mathematica or Maple or Sage. To get them to be
> > users, all
> > you need to do is convince the calculus instructor to use Sage. Of
> > course most of
> > these students drop that program regardless. Engineering students may
> > pick up
> > Matlab in subsequent courses, since that is more likely to be used in
> > practice.
Or when the teacher forces to use Matlab, even if it's pirated. I've
heard of a graduate student whose teacher didn't want to help him
because he was using Scilab instead of Matlab.
Cheers,
Ronan
Dr. David Kirkby
Michael,
Where does the Mathematica Home Edition license say you can't do
research with it? I've herd this rumor, but nobody has managed to
substantiate this by showing the license conditions.
I've not seen the license conditions - if they are available online, I
can't find them. But the FAQ implies (and I believe this is the intent),
that you *can* use it for personal research, but not as part of a
commercial or academic job.
From the FAQ at
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematicahomeedition/qa.html
Q: Is Mathematica Home Edition for anyone using Mathematica at home?
Yes. For years, people have been excited about using Mathematica to
"play" or to pursue serious research outside of their commercial or
academic jobs. Now Mathematica Home Edition provides an inexpensive
version of Mathematica for those who want to use its powerful technology
to explore their ideas. For those who want to integrate Mathematica into
their teaching, research, or work, Mathematica Professional is always
available.
I'm the first to admit the wording is a bit confusing, but I think the
intent is pretty clear.
I don't think this is the first time some sort of 'personal' edition of
MMA has been made available. The Mathematica Talk page on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mathematica
has some comments from Jon McLoone, a WRI employee - or at least he was
when he wrote this. In it Jon says "In fact there are (depending on the
region) Standard, Government, charity, educational, pre-college, school,
student and retiree pricing levels, but I think that that is too much
informaton."
I must say, I agree limiting it to only 32-bits is a bit silly. In this
day and age, with most computers having 64-bit processors, and
Mathematica quite hungry for RAM, WRI have put a silly limitation on the
home edition.
I suspect Sage is having some impact on the sales of Mathematica. I
would also guess that a low-priced Mathematica might attract some to
that, rather than free alternatives. But competition is generally a good
thing, as it forces both to innovate.
mabshoff
On Feb 12, 6:12 am, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net>
wrote:
> mabshoff wrote:
<SNIP>
> Michael,
Hi David,
> Where does the Mathematica Home Edition license say you can't do
> research with it? I've herd this rumor, but nobody has managed to
> substantiate this by showing the license conditions.
about the restrictions of using it in non-academic settings. One can
do research with that version.
> I've not seen the license conditions - if they are available online, I
> can't find them. But the FAQ implies (and I believe this is the intent),
> that you *can* use it for personal research, but not as part of a
> commercial or academic job.
>
> Q: Is Mathematica Home Edition for anyone using Mathematica at home?
>
> Yes. For years, people have been excited about using Mathematica to
> "play" or to pursue serious research outside of their commercial or
> academic jobs. Now Mathematica Home Edition provides an inexpensive
> version of Mathematica for those who want to use its powerful technology
> to explore their ideas. For those who want to integrate Mathematica into
> their teaching, research, or work, Mathematica Professional is always
> available.
>
> I'm the first to admit the wording is a bit confusing, but I think the
> intent is pretty clear.
>
> I don't think this is the first time some sort of 'personal' edition of
> MMA has been made available. The Mathematica Talk page on Wikipedia
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mathematica
>
> has some comments from Jon McLoone, a WRI employee - or at least he was
> when he wrote this. In it Jon says "In fact there are (depending on the
> region) Standard, Government, charity, educational, pre-college, school,
> student and retiree pricing levels, but I think that that is too much
> informaton."
>
> I must say, I agree limiting it to only 32-bits is a bit silly. In this
> day and age, with most computers having 64-bit processors, and
> Mathematica quite hungry for RAM, WRI have put a silly limitation on the
> home edition.
limited that version to allocating a maximum of 100 MB.
> I suspect Sage is having some impact on the sales of Mathematica. I
> would also guess that a low-priced Mathematica might attract some to
> that, rather than free alternatives. But competition is generally a good
> thing, as it forces both to innovate.
Since you are a Sun fan you might want to check out
http://blogs.sun.com/jaggerisgod/entry/serug_sage_math_open_source
It is William's talk about Sage via Sun's education network.
Cheers,
Michael
Dr. David Kirkby
>
>
> On Feb 12, 6:12 am, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net>
> wrote:
>> mabshoff wrote:
>
> <SNIP>
>
>> Michael,
>
> Hi David,
Hi Michael.
>> Where does the Mathematica Home Edition license say you can't do
>> research with it? I've herd this rumor, but nobody has managed to
>> substantiate this by showing the license conditions.
>
> You are correct, as you write below, that my intention to write was
> about the restrictions of using it in non-academic settings. One can
> do research with that version.
This thing about not being able to use the Home Edition of Mathematica
for research seems to have propogated around the web like wild fire. The
same point is made on comp.math.symbolic, an Apple users web site, Sage
... etc.
As you say, it can't be used in academic environments, although students
can use it, but a student version is cheaper.
I feel WRI shot themselves in the foot at University College London,
where the Mathematica usage was dramatically falling due to the price.
We had a site license, but the cost had to be recovered from departments
or individuals using Mathematica. As the WRI increased the license cost
each year, so the cost per user went up. As the cost per user went up,
so the number of users fell, so the cost per user went up even more....
etc etc.
I recall at one point our department had a license for the whole
department (150 or so staff). 10 years later and my boss suggested I
should consider using something else, like MATLAB, as I was the only
person in the department using Mathematica. The cost had just escalated
to silly levels.
>> I must say, I agree limiting it to only 32-bits is a bit silly. In this
>> day and age, with most computers having 64-bit processors, and
>> Mathematica quite hungry for RAM, WRI have put a silly limitation on the
>> home edition.
>
> Well, Magma's student version is much worst: Last time I checked it
> limited that version to allocating a maximum of 100 MB.
100 MB is just plain silly. I think limiting MMA to 32-bit is silly now,
but 100 MB is a joke.
>
> Since you are a Sun fan you might want to check out
>
> http://blogs.sun.com/jaggerisgod/entry/serug_sage_math_open_source
>
> It is William's talk about Sage via Sun's education network.
Nice paper.
If William is ever in London and Sage is running well on Solaris x86,
I'm sure he would get a nice welcome at the London OpenSolaris User
Group (LOSUG).
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/losug/
There are often talks about new or interesting software on Solaris. I'm
sure Sun would welcome it, as they are sponsoring the port.
The LOSUG meetings are quite popular - probably helped by the fact there
is free food, beer and wine! But seriously, a talk on Sage I am sure
would be popular. The lady that organises the meetings (Joy) does a
pretty good job of it.
Perhaps with the economic climate like it is, more companies will look
to free software for their needs. Perhaps there is light at the end of
the tunnel after all.
William Stein
Here's an interview with Wolfram from 1993 that touches on this point:
------------------------
...
Wolfram: There's another thing, quite honestly,
that that community has a hard time with. They
sort of hate one aspect of what I have done,
which is to take intellectual developments and
make a company out of them and sell things to
people.
DDJ: Probably not surprising, if
mathematicians are the most puristic of
scientists.
Wolfram: My own view of that, which has
hardened over the years, is, my god, that's the
right thing to do. If you look at what's
happened with TeX, for example, which went
in the other direction...well, Mathematica could
not have been brought to where it is today if it
had not been done as a commercial effort. The
amount of money that has to be spent to do all
the details of development, you just can't
support that in any other way than this
unique American idea of the entrepreneurial
company.
-- Stephen Wolfram, 1993, Doctor Dobbs
Journal Interview
------------------------------------
>
>>> I must say, I agree limiting it to only 32-bits is a bit silly. In this
>>> day and age, with most computers having 64-bit processors, and
>>> Mathematica quite hungry for RAM, WRI have put a silly limitation on the
>>> home edition.
>>
>> Well, Magma's student version is much worst: Last time I checked it
>> limited that version to allocating a maximum of 100 MB.
>
>
> 100 MB is just plain silly. I think limiting MMA to 32-bit is silly now,
> but 100 MB is a joke.
Yep. Here's the order form for the student version:
http://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/magma/Ordering/order_student.shtml
The evidently increased the limit from 100MB to 150MB :-) It has
*other* limitations too:
# The student version contains all user-level functions that are
present in the full version. However, in a few cases some
high-performance versions of algorithms may be omitted.
# The student version is restricted to a workspace of 150 MB.
# Some advanced databases are not available with the student version.
There is a recent Ph.D. thesis about Groebner basis where the author
only could afford the student version of Magma, and this directly
impacted his research.
>
>>
>> Since you are a Sun fan you might want to check out
>>
>> http://blogs.sun.com/jaggerisgod/entry/serug_sage_math_open_source
>>
>> It is William's talk about Sage via Sun's education network.
>
>
> Nice paper.
>
> If William is ever in London and Sage is running well on Solaris x86,
> I'm sure he would get a nice welcome at the London OpenSolaris User
> Group (LOSUG).
I'm going to be in Europe for nearly 2 months *this* summer -- most of
June and July, except as scheduled here:
http://wiki.wstein.org/schedule
I think I still have room in my schedule... Who knows, maybe I'll end
up going to London. I have number theory research friends there too.
>
> http://opensolaris.org/os/project/losug/
>
> There are often talks about new or interesting software on Solaris. I'm
> sure Sun would welcome it, as they are sponsoring the port.
>
>
> The LOSUG meetings are quite popular - probably helped by the fact there
> is free food, beer and wine! But seriously, a talk on Sage I am sure
> would be popular. The lady that organises the meetings (Joy) does a
> pretty good job of it.
>
> Perhaps with the economic climate like it is, more companies will look
> to free software for their needs. Perhaps there is light at the end of
> the tunnel after all.
I get the impression that this is actually highly likely after having
gone to the discussions in our department about what we need to cut to
make ends meet now that our budget is being slashed. It's nice to
know that working on Sage might help a lot of people in the world a
little tiny amount in dealing with the pain of the financial crisis.
William
mabshoff
On Feb 12, 11:16 am, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net>
wrote:
> mabshoff wrote:
<SNIP>
> There are often talks about new or interesting software on Solaris. I'm
> sure Sun would welcome it, as they are sponsoring the port.
certainly isn't unhappy about it and have recently offered some
interesting resources to take it to the next level, but the DoD was
there first :)
Cheers,
Michael
Dr. David Kirkby
I don't have a problem with them making money from the product. Let the
users choose whether to use Mathematica, Sage or whatever else. But in
some ways, the cost of the academic license was such that many users
were using MATLAB instead, as it was much cheaper. Of course, I'm aware
there are differences between MATLAB and Mathematica, but for many
applications, either will do. Mathematica just got too expensive. I know
the Maths department at UCL did use Mathematica a lot, but they too were
looking at Maple, due to the cost of Mathematica.
>> 100 MB is just plain silly. I think limiting MMA to 32-bit is silly now,
>> but 100 MB is a joke.
>
> Yep. Here's the order form for the student version:
>
> http://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/magma/Ordering/order_student.shtml
>
> The evidently increased the limit from 100MB to 150MB :-) It has
> *other* limitations too:
That's a no-brainer then. Personally I've never come across anyone using
Magma, but then I did not study maths at uni.
> There is a recent Ph.D. thesis about Groebner basis where the author
> only could afford the student version of Magma, and this directly
> impacted his research.
Students often push programs to their limits, so any attempt to make a
student version unattractive to a commercial company by limiting
features is doomed to failure IMHO.
> I'm going to be in Europe for nearly 2 months *this* summer -- most of
> June and July, except as scheduled here:
> http://wiki.wstein.org/schedule
>
> I think I still have room in my schedule... Who knows, maybe I'll end
> up going to London. I have number theory research friends there too.
Well, if you do go to London, I'm sure Joy (joy dot marshall at
sun <dot> com) would like to hear from you. Especially as Sun are
sponsoring the Sage port.
Sun have worked pretty closely with Wolfram Research too. I'm somewhat
surprised Wolfram Research have not released a version of Mathematica
for Solaris x86 for a system using Intel CPUs. Currently, an x86 system
is only supported with AMD CPUs, despite me sticking some information on
the internet ages ago about how to get around this - just replace some
of the libraries Wolfram ship, with different versions from Sun.
>> Perhaps with the economic climate like it is, more companies will look
>> to free software for their needs. Perhaps there is light at the end of
>> the tunnel after all.
>
> I get the impression that this is actually highly likely after having
> gone to the discussions in our department about what we need to cut to
> make ends meet now that our budget is being slashed.
It seems to me one way companies could save money now.
Dave
mabshoff
On Feb 13, 8:51 am, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net>
wrote:
> William Stein wrote:
<SNIP>
> > I think I still have room in my schedule... Who knows, maybe I'll end
> > up going to London. I have number theory research friends there too.
>
> Well, if you do go to London, I'm sure Joy (joy dot marshall at
> sun <dot> com) would like to hear from you. Especially as Sun are
> sponsoring the Sage port.
Sage, the DoD does that. Sun has recently offered some resources like
access to large machines to help out which is very welcome.
<SNIP>
By the way: Starting from 3.3 on we will release beta binaries for 32
bit Solaris 10 on Sparc as well as x86 with a build in toolchain. 64
bit support isn't far out and once I am in Seattle after SD13 at the
end of the months my goal will be to get all the remaining doctests
that are broken fixed. By Sage 4.0 (probably out around SD 15 in May)
we will add full Tier 1 support for 32 and 64 bit Solaris on Sparc as
well as Intel CPUs.
Cheers,
Michael
Dr. David Kirkby
> Once more for the record: Sun is *not* sponsoring the Solaris port of
> Sage, the DoD does that.
Sorry, I mis-read William's presentation
"Funding from Microsoft, UW, NSF, DoD, Google, Sun, private donors etc".
It's good to see somebody (DoD)is funding the port. I think there could
be a lot of interest in this from Solaris people, who tend to often come
from scientific backgrounds.
> Sun has recently offered some resources like
> access to large machines to help out which is very welcome.
Yes, I'm sure it is useful. There is some serious looking hardware in
that Sage presentation on the Sun web site.
> <SNIP>
>
> By the way: Starting from 3.3 on we will release beta binaries for 32
> bit Solaris 10 on Sparc as well as x86 with a build in toolchain. 64
> bit support isn't far out and once I am in Seattle after SD13 at the
> end of the months my goal will be to get all the remaining doctests
> that are broken fixed. By Sage 4.0 (probably out around SD 15 in May)
> we will add full Tier 1 support for 32 and 64 bit Solaris on Sparc as
> well as Intel CPUs.
Does the source compile with reasonable ease on Solaris as 32-bit now?
Last time I looked at the source, which was several months back, there
were several issues, which you knew how to fix, but had not had time to
incorporate into the source. Rather than keep applying the fixes with
each new version, I thought I'd wait until they were incorporated. I
don't mind testing and reporting failures, but if there are many known
issues, and known solutions which have not been incorporated, I'd rather
wait until they are.
mabshoff
On Feb 13, 3:09 pm, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net>
wrote:
> mabshoff wrote:
Hi David,
> > Once more for the record: Sun is *not* sponsoring the Solaris port of
> > Sage, the DoD does that.
>
> Sorry, I mis-read William's presentation
> "Funding from Microsoft, UW, NSF, DoD, Google, Sun, private donors etc".
> It's good to see somebody (DoD)is funding the port. I think there could
> be a lot of interest in this from Solaris people, who tend to often come
> from scientific backgrounds.
hardware around since if you need a large SMP box you can either pick
Itanium, Sparc or Power6 and when I mean large SMP I am taking 0.5+ TB
RAM or more, so 8 sockets won't cut it :)
> > Sun has recently offered some resources like
> > access to large machines to help out which is very welcome.
>
> Yes, I'm sure it is useful. There is some serious looking hardware in
> that Sage presentation on the Sun web site.
> > <SNIP>
>
> > By the way: Starting from 3.3 on we will release beta binaries for 32
> > bit Solaris 10 on Sparc as well as x86 with a build in toolchain. 64
> > bit support isn't far out and once I am in Seattle after SD13 at the
> > end of the months my goal will be to get all the remaining doctests
> > that are broken fixed. By Sage 4.0 (probably out around SD 15 in May)
> > we will add full Tier 1 support for 32 and 64 bit Solaris on Sparc as
> > well as Intel CPUs.
>
> Does the source compile with reasonable ease on Solaris as 32-bit now?
> Last time I looked at the source, which was several months back, there
> were several issues, which you knew how to fix, but had not had time to
> incorporate into the source. Rather than keep applying the fixes with
> each new version, I thought I'd wait until they were incorporated. I
> don't mind testing and reporting failures, but if there are many known
> issues, and known solutions which have not been incorporated, I'd rather
> wait until they are.
ran into in Matplotlib. That one was quite strange to say the least.
One problem on Solaris at the moment is that Solaris' default "which"
does not return a non-zero return code when $FOO isn't found, so all
the detection at the start of the build phase does not work and things
do easily blow up later. I have a patch for that, but it isn't clean
yet.
I do build the following from sources, i.e. no funny g prefix like the
Solaris versions:
* gcc 4.3.2 build with GNU as and GNU ld (switching to 4.3.3 soon).
gcc 4.2.x is *broken*, i.e. numpy will segfault when compiled with it
on Solaris
* binutils 2.18 or higher
* gnu make
There a more needed bits at the moment if you want Sage to doctest
well and also do stuff like -bdist since there are still GNUisms in
some shell scripts. Overall look at
http://wiki.sagemath.org/solaris/toolchain
I have precompiled toolchains I use for x86 and Sparc Solaris 10 in
http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/mabshoff/solaris-binaries/
The current 3.3.alpha6 status can be seen at
http://wiki.sagemath.org/solaris/sage-3.3
Note that two important patches to that are mandatory to make doctests
pass are not on that page yet, but they should be after 3.3.rc1. The
older 3.2.3 Solaris porting page has the fixes fixed in with other now
merged fixes, but they are hard to extract unless you know what you
are looking for. As I mentioned there will be 3.3 binaries with all
Solaris specific fixes not yet in standard Sage with integrated
toolchain in one tar.gz once the 3.3 release is done.
Cheers,
Michael
William Stein
>
>
>
> On Feb 13, 3:09 pm, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net>
> wrote:
>> mabshoff wrote:
>
> Hi David,
>
>> > Once more for the record: Sun is *not* sponsoring the Solaris port of
>> > Sage, the DoD does that.
>>
>> Sorry, I mis-read William's presentation
>> "Funding from Microsoft, UW, NSF, DoD, Google, Sun, private donors etc".
>
> Yes, but Sun gave Sage the new hardware at a rather excellent price.
>
>> It's good to see somebody (DoD)is funding the port. I think there could
>> be a lot of interest in this from Solaris people, who tend to often come
>> from scientific backgrounds.
>
> I can see that, too. There is certainly still enough large Sparc SMP
> hardware around since if you need a large SMP box you can either pick
> Itanium, Sparc or Power6 and when I mean large SMP I am taking 0.5+ TB
> RAM or more, so 8 sockets won't cut it :)
>
>> > Sun has recently offered some resources like
>> > access to large machines to help out which is very welcome.
>>
>> Yes, I'm sure it is useful. There is some serious looking hardware in
>> that Sage presentation on the Sun web site.
>
> Ironically it is running Linux :)
Not all of it. The disk array is running OpenSolaris and one of
virtualization node has virtual machines running Solaris 10 and
OpenSolaris.
William
mabshoff
On Feb 13, 4:47 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 4:30 PM, mabshoff <mabsh...@googlemail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
> >> Yes, I'm sure it is useful. There is some serious looking hardware in
> >> that Sage presentation on the Sun web site.
>
> > Ironically it is running Linux :)
>
> Not all of it. The disk array is running OpenSolaris and one of
> virtualization node has virtual machines running Solaris 10 and
> OpenSolaris.
>
> William
images :)
Anyway, I forgot to mention that clisp is broken with any gcc after
3.2.3 and you need clisp 2.47 + some fixes to get it to build on Sparc
at all and have it work :), so I have a binary clisp 2.47.spkg for
Solaris/Sparc. It isn't on sage.math yet, but it will be soon enough.
The long term plan is to fix everything so that the SFW toolchain will
build Sage on Solaris, at least in 32 bit mode. This will require
fixes to support g77 again for example, but since I need to do that
for Cygwin anyway it isn't far away. Besides that there are also
various ld fixes that we do need since some code in Sage is dependent
on GNU ld semantics and so on, but I know all the issues, just need to
find time to fix them :)
Cheers,
Michael