mabshoff 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: > > > 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
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. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
