On Apr 29, 11:57 pm, "William Stein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm giving a plenary talk at ISSAC in Linz, Austria this summer. I'm supposed > to write a 2-page "abstract/paper" for the proceedings. I just wrote > something: > http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/was/tmp/abstract.pdf
I think what you wrote is a pretty good introduction to what Sage is, but it is a little long on the open source philosophy (which will turn some people off) and it leaves out interesting details. The audience will be very interested in why Sage might succeed, when previous open source efforts have failed to attract the large audience of general purpose users and developers. I suggest the following (some of which you mentioned): 1) python is an easy and widely used high level language which is particularly well suited for interfacing different programs 2) collecting all the existing open source programs has allowed Sage to quickly reach "critical mass", ie: it is very usable right now 3) new and interesting things are being brought into Sage (JMol, user interface improvements, etc) 4) new mathematical algorithms and libraries are being developed for Sage (FLINT, Linear algebra, rapid development with Cython, etc) 5) researchers are using Sage right now (list contributors and areas, and papers if possible) 6) Sage is open source I think if you start with the technical merits you can easily win over the audience. These people have heard all kinds of sales pitches, and open source looks like just another crusade. They are all uniformly interested in computing things, and in software they can use for their work. Sage has a very strong case on those grounds, please (I'm begging you) stick to it :) Either way, good luck at ISSAC. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
