> Estimate of number of Sage users by year:
>
> Feb 2005: 3
> Feb 2006: 100
> Feb 2007: 500
> Feb 2008: 5,000
> Feb 2009: 10,000  (Goal)
> Feb 2009: 25,000  (Goal)
> Feb 2010: 100,000  (Goal)
> Feb 2011: 1,000,000 (Goal)

Hi,

I wonder what the status of this goals is. Is it something we all should 
strive for? I guess at the end of the day we all have our own agendas because 
Sage is a volunteer driven project but still I am unsure what these goals 
mean. To be more specific, I am not sure that I'd aim for 10^6 Sage users. As 
William pointed out already this would mean a lot of maintenance and 
infrastructure work. Also, I doubt that there are 10^6 mathematicians out 
there in need of a mathematics software for their research so I figure by 
seriously(!) aiming for way more users than research mathematicians Sage's 
slogan would need to drop the  "viable alternative MAGMA". You don't get 10^6 
users with a sophisticated modell of p-Adics but you might get them with 
flashy graphics. Sure we can do both but this is not represented in these 
goal figures. Or in other words: I am willing to sacrifice this massive 
growth for "critical peer acclaim". If we'd really aim for 
maximum "marketshare" we might miss the point where we could have created a 
viable open-source alternative to Magma a major contribution to the 
mathematical sciences. In my book research papers citing Sage are a much 
better benchmark.

To avoid misunderstandings: I am not against 10^6 users, it is just not my 
goal.

Thoughts?

From the ivory tower ;-)
Martin

-- 
name: Martin Albrecht
_pgp: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x8EF0DC99
_www: http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~malb
_jab: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
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://www.sagemath.org
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to