On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 at 02:15PM -0800, William Stein wrote: > "Ceterum censeo: > Nobody has ever paid a license fee for the proof that Sylow subgroups > exist in every finite group, Nobody should ever pay a license fee for > computing Sylow subgroups in a given finite group."
On a similar note, back in December I realized that there's a further problem with closed-source math systems. The problem, ironically enough, is with free packages written by mathematicians. For instance, John Stembridge has some nice Maple code for working with posets. But if you can't afford Maple, or don't have access to it...Stembridge might as well be charging for it. I came up with the metaphor of a dog-whistle symphony: maybe it's a lovely symphony, but you can't hear it! Stembridge's software may be freely available and very useful, but without Maple you can't use it. I wrote a bit more about this at http://dandrake.livejournal.com/274387.html. Feel free to use it. Dan -- --- Dan Drake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- KAIST Department of Mathematical Sciences ------- http://math.kaist.ac.kr/~drake
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