I used Macsyma in the early 80s when it was still free (I think the condition was that you had to promise to report a bug if/when you found one, and I did in fact find one in the matrix inversion code!). I then moved to a university with no money or suitable computers at the time Macsyma went commercial, so lost the use of the code I had written. [I think that the first modular elliptic curve I ever computed was using Macsyma in about 1983 or 1984.]
I understand that the main obstacle stopping Magma becoming free (in all senses) is the attitude of the University of Sydney to the intellectual property of its emplyees -- rather than any individual's position. John 2009/7/15 Ondrej Certik <ond...@certik.cz>: > > On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 6:30 PM, William Stein<wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Ondrej Certik<ond...@certik.cz> wrote: >>> >>> On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Pablo De Napoli<pden...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> I have left the following comment on the blog... >>>> >>>> "However, the GPL means that people cannot realistically use SAGE in a >>>> commercial tool, either as a platform/runtime, or as an embedded >>>> component." >>>> >>>> What it is the justification for this claim? Why wouldn't the GPL >>>> allow one to use SAGE as a "commercial tool"? >>>> I think that a GPL program like Sage might well have commercial >>>> applications. For instance: you could use Sage for modelling an >>>> industrial process. There is nothing in the GPL against that. >> >> Yes, that comment does seem a little off. E.g., people use Linux as a >> commercial tool, platform, and embedded component in commercial >> products all the time. >> >> Anyway, I just posted the following on that blog, which was about the >> whole paragraph, which I thought wasn't quite on target. I >> unfortunately made a statement about NZMATH that isn't so nice, but >> the fact is that it is the perfect example to illustrate why GPL is a >> vastly better choice of license for the Sage project than BSD. (Short >> answer -- because we get to work with the GAP, Singular, maxima, and >> PARI projects because we use the GPL license. If we used BSD we >> couldn't. Working with Gap/Singular/Maxima/PARI rocks.) >> >> I'm the director of the Sage project, and I would like to clarify a >> possible misconception that the following statement you made might >> suggest: "SAGE, an open-source Pythonic replacement for >> Maple/Mathematica/Magma/Matlab, is another very successful project, >> but they staunchly use the GPL. Their reasoning is much like Zed’s, >> because the symbolic math software community has been burned in the >> past by people profiting from proprietary extensions of BSD code >> without attribution or contribution. However, the GPL means that >> people cannot realistically use SAGE in a commercial tool, either as a >> platform/runtime, or as an embedded component. The SAGE authors have, >> presumably, weighed the trade-offs and decided it’s ultimately more >> valuable to be protected than to have the contributions of that >> segment of developers." >> >> This gives us far too much credit. In fact, the Sage project uses the >> GPL because every single one of the major symbolic mathematics >> programs that Sage builds upon -- Maxima, Singular, PARI, NTL, and >> GAP -- chose to use the GPL (not LGPL) back in the 1990s. If it >> weren't for Sage building on those projects (and their amazing >> communities!), Sage's capabilities would still be quite small in >> comparison to Mathematica, Maple, and Magma. Sage uses the GPL >> because we have no choice but to use the GPL. > > There is no doubt about your argument with Maxima, Singular, PARI, > NTL, thus the Sage as a whole must be GPL. However, you still have the > right to choose a license for your own code, that can run without > those GPL components. > > Things like the build system, notebook, and your own code in Sage for > the math stuff. For this, you explained the position here: > > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/msg/800a6bed4a979cd0 > > E.g. you are in fact very open to have BSD build system and I like > that, e.g. it is just waiting for the scipy community to pick this up. > > For other things (besides the build system), you wrote: > > " > Anyway, +1 to their being a BSD'd build system. Most code in Sage > is GPL'd because either (1) it is derived from code GPL'd a decade > ago, or (2) we'll get ripped off by the Ma's. The build system > doesn't fall into either category. > " > > So I think the cathegory (2) is the thing that Peter was talking about > in his blogpost. That you made some decision, e.g. it was not 100% > enforced by the cathegory (1). > >> >> There is a Python project called NZMATH that was started at the same >> time as Sage, is BSD licensed, and original had exactly the same goals >> as Sage. It continues to be excellent evidence that Sage would not >> succeed without building on the great work of the GAP, Singular, PARI, >> and Maxima projects. See http://tnt.math.metro-u.ac.jp/nzmath/. > > I thought nzmath is just for number theory, while Sage has much broader goals. > > 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
