On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Robert Bradshaw <rober...@math.washington.edu> wrote: > On Mar 31, 2010, at 5:45 AM, David Kirkby wrote: > > [...] > >> IMHO, if Sage is ever to become a viable alternative to Mathematica, >> Maple, MATLAB and Macsyma, you are going to have to shift the emphasis >> towards more thorough testing before making releases. I can't imagine >> Wolfram Research shipping binaries for platforms without testing them >> first. Of course bugs do occur, and what works on one machine does not >> necessary work on another. But it seems to me a lot of Sage bugs are >> avoidable. >> >> What I personally perceive as a lack of sufficient testing of Sage, >> leaves me questioning myself whether I ever want to use Sage. I've >> used Mathematica on and off for many years, and have come across bugs. >> But never have I come across bugs so easily avoided as I see in Sage. >> >> I'm trying to be constructive here, by pointing out what I believe are >> deficiencies in the current process of releases. > > We all want more testing. I see two options: > > (1) Change lots of other people's behavior. > (2) Set up a large-scale automated build farm. > > Though we have neither right now, I see (2) happening before (1). > > - Robert
If I don't either (a) get much more money in grants, (b) have more volunteers willing to do (2) and (1), or (c) start a company and sell Sage binaries that are more polished, then indeed Sage releases will likely never be as polished as Mathematica, or even RedHat releases. Regarding (a), if anything, grant funding for Sage that would cover costs like build farms, etc., has only gotten more difficult. Regarding (b), somebody volunteer. Regarding (c), yes, the RedHat model for selling GPL'd software has the potentially to (legally) work -- we would provide source code for Sage for free, but all the binaries would only be available from *us* to people who pay for a support contract (redistribution of binaries would be technically legal but discouraged). Maybe Kirkby wants (c)? I don't personally want (c). -- William -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
