On 8 Feb 2014 05:17, "kcrisman" <kcris...@gmail.com> wrote: > > So, in the Sage/GAP/etc. urban legend, some pathetic PhD student proves a theorem, and then upon graduating can't afford the software it's implemented in. Nice argument for open source. I have no reason to disbelieve it, and have seen very similar quotes attributed to someone from the GAP project.
I can believe it, but I can't see any fundamental difference from a Ph.D student developing something which requires hardware he can't afford to use later. That is probably uncommon for a mathematics Ph.D, but it extremely common for an engineering Ph.D. During my Ph.D I made extensive use of a picosecond pulsed laser, but there is no way I could continue that work without working at an institution which had such an expensive laser. There must be a lot of people who done their Ph.D at CERN using facilities no other lab in the world has. I know a licence for some software is expensive. Someone told me that some software for modelling the coverage of cell sites for mobile phones was £1,000,000 which is about 1.6 million USD. But ultimately, I believe that the most expensive hardware will always cost much more than the most expensive software. Personally I believe the most useful thing one gets from doing a Ph.D, is learning how to do research properly. Most people end up using that research knowledge in fields other than what they did their Ph.D in. So the fact that they don't have access to the hardware or software they used during their Ph.D is not such a big issue. Of course free software is nice, and I do understand reasons why it would be sensible to avoid programs like Mathematica. Dave -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
