On Dec 10, 2007 11:07 AM, Stephen Forrest <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Dec 10, 2007 1:24 PM, William Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > See *that* is exactly the point. When I talked with one of the Maple > > founders > > about why Maple started in the 1980's, it was precisely because the > > mathematicians working on the software didn't want to duplicate tapes and > > mail them around the country. We're no different. > > What exactly is your message here?
Sorry for being so vague. My point is that I don't want to duplicate DVD's by hand (or pay for that), then take orders, and mail them around, and possibly get in trouble with the university for operating a business. Running web sites is enough work for me. If somebody else wants to do that for Sage, it would be great! It just shouldn't be me or Tom (that's what I meant by "We" above). > That a lack of concern with > logistics on the part of programmers has doomed collaborative projects > of the past to a closed-source commercial model? That's what the Maple person I was talking with said. > That mathematicians > working on Sage should be concerned with the logistics of software > distribution? No, actually the opposite -- optimally we shouldn't be concerned about that. > The former is certainly true; the latter raises a question about the > effective allocation of resources. I expect that to get this > logistical stuff done, it'd a lot easier for Sage to recruit a > technically-adept fan of open source with a decent math background > than to teach an (arbitrary) mathematician about software > distribution. I totally agree. > > My point is that relinquishing control of logistics to non-experts > needn't be the death-knell of the project. I totally agree with you. > Down the road you could > have a nonprofit "Sage Foundation" which does distrubution, handles > integrates and polices code coming in from academic institutions, but > does almost no real "development" itself. This model is not without > precedent. > That would be awesome. For me "down the road" is very short -- e.g., a few minutes. Does anybody want to volunteer right now to work on these sorts of logistic things, e.g., helping with an effort to get together DVD's for the AMS meeting, say of Sage 2.9 when we release it this week? Someone could coordinate having several hundred DVD's made cheaply. I'm happy to be involved, but just not the driving force. -- william --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
