Hi,
I've just looked at the two versions of this (the one William posted
yesterday, and the one David posted today). As a quick note before I
forget, there's a sentence that's duplicated in David's version today
("The following is an alphabetical list ...").
I like the succinctness of David's version, but I feel like the
exclusion of the long example (about Jane and her theorem) is a
significant flaw. Think about the audience here: if someone reads the
Notices, chances are, they're at a large US institution. In the
second version, it seems like the main argument being made for open
source software is an economic one. This is an important one, but
most professors can get their departments (especially at large
research universities) to purchase software for them, so in the end,
it's a somewhat abstract issue, one that probably doesn't affect
their livelihood. On the other hand, the example about Jane and her
theorem is wildly relevant to them. This isn't just an abstract issue
-- William and Mark Watkins found an example of a theorem in group
theory this week at AIM where the proof depends quite heavily on
computation, and they don't even pretend to tell you anything about
it. How can you believe their theorem if there's no code, and what
they did write involves proprietary software that only runs on
hardware ten years out of date? I think this point is much more
relevant, and much more likely to get serious research professors --
even those who don't use computing in their work -- to understand the
importance of open source.
Given that there's a word limit, I think the section about SAGE
should be trimmed down to make this point. After all, we're trying to
convince them that open source is the right model, not that SAGE is
the right program for them. (Obviously we need to convince them of
that, too.) As it stands now, though, the article feels much more
like an advertisement for SAGE, and less about why open source is
important for mathematicians.
I guess the real issue is this: in the first version, I think the
article is selling professors at top research schools on the idea of
open source. In the second version, I feel like we're selling
professors at smaller schools (with smaller budgets) on SAGE as a
good alternative to other, proprietary systems. Which is our goal?
More to the point, which of those two audiences has a stronger
influence on AMS and NSF funding decisions? My guess is the first
group, since we're talking about *research* money. Of course, I could
be completely wrong. Similarly, if we're trying to sell them on using
SAGE, just direct them to a public notebook server, with a few chunks
of hand-picked examples already in worksheets; SAGE speaks for itself.
-cc
On Aug 4, 2007, at 1:48 PM, David Joyner wrote:
>
> Hi:
>
> William Stein and I have written a draft
> http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/wdj/research/oscas-ams-
> notices4.pdf
> which seems suitable (based on suggestions and criteria given to us by
> the editor
> Andy Magid). Thoughts anyone?
>
> - David Joyner
>
> >
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel
URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
