Dear sage-devel, in this thread there were some comments concerning very general aspects of human interaction and value. I am no mathematician and I am no programmer, nevertheless I feel urged to voice my opinion.
A technical project in the scope of sage is also intrinsically tied to a social project. State, potential, sustainablility, success or failure of the technical implementation will always depend on the overall quality of the "social ecosystem" out of which it is implemented. I have the impression that the Sage project is a very healthy one, with great achievements in a short span of time. Compared with other open software projects it also has a good "corporate identity", homepage, documentation, distribution channels and an active base of contributors and users. This relative success is in my opinion founded in the friendly, cooperative and encouraging tone prevailing in the communications. I am aware that talent is not evenly distributed. I am aware that some people will have far greater potential than others. I am aware that the gifted will write breathtaking short, clear and concise code that works, while others will just produce heaps of a buggy mess. I am aware that this project is based in an academic environment, with a pronounced intellectual pecking order. But. I strongly resent the comments and "spirit" of Prof. Fateman. Using classifications like "losers" and "winners", "top producers" and "junk submitters" he introduces very elitist terminology and patterns of argumentation into this thread. This spawned terms like "bad apples" and "crackpot" and moved the focus of the thread. Before it was positive and open minded with the goal to spread the word of sage and attract new people for contribution. Afterwards it had negative and defensive tone and - worst of all - was full of doubt. What shall people think who have just learned about sage and consider to spend time with the project? They might read this. Will they feel comfortable under the argus eyes of the "top producers" , or will they shrink under the burden to prove to be a winner and not a loser - or even worse: "a bad apple". Or - will they just leave and move on? Prof. Fateman is entitled to his opinion. It is obviously based on long professional experience, and he can claim his experience proves him right. But sometimes it is not only important if an opinion is right or wrong, but also which words, phrasings, lines of argumentation or more general "categories of thinking" are used. Right and wrong are just relevant in reference to a specific framework. And it is my strong opinion, that this specific intellectual framework of categorizing people should not be used on a public (or semi public) forum about a volunteer open source project. Some points were made: about a better webpage, about a better logo, about having a plan, about other things that are not as perfect as they could be. I think basically things are pretty good, but sure, there is always room for improvement. My suggestions for improvements would be: Consolidate the forum. It is the main communication platform of the project (together with the trac system). It might be a good idea to reduce to maybe 3 google groups (Devel, Support, Users). One thing that bogs me is that in the current groups there are lists with no new postings for long time, and then there are other lists where postings fall "off the radar" very quickly, because there is much traffic and the listing on the front page is rather short. I don't know if this debatable at all, but there are other and more flexible forum/mailing list packages out there, which give more possibilities with user interaction (like attachements). Since it was said that sage needs more people with engineering background: I think a cool thing would be a forum for users, where they can present their work with sage and also interact and work together on a project. Something like Wolfram Demonstration project, but even more community driven. So to say: give people the space to be an expert user of sage and be a respected member of the community without being a top notch programmer at sage-devel. The goal to be a "viable alternativ" to the M's can only be reached if it is accepted by users, not only in mathematics but also in applied mathematics. It will be accepted if sage as a tool is accepted in the respective "peer group". But the only chance to get this acceptance is also to acknowledge those people as "peers", as members of the sage community and not hinder that by artificial preconceptions about intellectual aptness. I am no mathematican and I am no programmer. I hope I didn't *drag somebody*. And if Prof. Fateman reads until here: Sorry for stealing your precious time. Emil Widmann -- 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
