On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Brian Granger <ellisonbg....@gmail.com> wrote: > > Personally, I think it is important to have access to source code. I > do in fact read the source code of Sage (and many other projects) > often. However, many people with whom I speak (user's of Matlab and > Mathematica) don't feel this is important. Their logic goes something > like this... > > "I have been using 'M' for decades and I have done fine not having > access to the source. I don't see why I would need it." > > I find this line of thinking hard to argue with, because it is based > on their experience.
And also this line of thinking is right. Imho. If something is so well tested by decades, I trust it more than something that is tested for a year or two, by a lot *less* people. > > I bring this up because I think we need to have better reasons about > why open source is important - arguments that are compelling to folks > who have been working successfully for years without reading the > source. I don't know what these are, but I know that we need them. Yes, I agree. I think the argument is definitely not "so that I can see that the proof is correct" -- maybe in pure mathematics (I am not judging that), but not for what I am doing. At least to me, such an argument is not at all compelling. I also don't buy the argument that by reading the code one can find and fix bugs, thus it is less error prone. In fact, I trust mathematica or maple much more than sage or sympy simply because it is tested by a lot more people. When Sage or sympy becomes so widely used as maple/mathematica, then I will trust it more too. For me the argument is purely technical and social. The social one is that it's easy to create a good community around an opensource code. Well, easy, it takes lots and lots of time, but when there is a good community, one can do lots of things done. So even if the quality of sage or sympy is much lower than mathematica, having the source code and the community around it, it is actually more useful to me, because I can get the job done with it, in fact easier than with mathematica, since I can hook my own scripts with it, and tweak it anyway I want. I have not seen the code of mathematica, but I would not be surprised, if the code in sympy was much simpler. And that's a very good argument for me, because I really want to understand codes, that I am using for scientific calculations -- that's because if the code is tested by not so many people, I don't trust it unless it's possible for me to grasp it --- and even then I don't trust it either, but I can build on top of it. The technical one is that I really want to be able to use the library in my codes, and so I want it to be freely downloadable, redistributable etc. On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 10:50 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Are you sure we really _need_ these arguments for those users? Yes, I think we need. At least I do. Btw, you use those arguments too in many of your presentations and lectures. And if the argument is not compelling, then I think it sounds naive, if you know what I mean. > I personally think it is better to just suck it up and compete for those > users based on quality, capabilities, and features, features, > features. Yes, I definitely agree with this one, as that is what it all boils down to in the end. But still having good arguments is handy for explaining to people why we do that. Ondrej --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
