I have just received a cease-and-desist letter from the lawyers (Dewey,Cheetum&Howe) hired by Mathematica. They say they have a trademark on "Mathematica BS". So that puts an end to my plans to create a fork.
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 6:21 PM, David Joyner <wdjoy...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hey, I'm with you there Marshall! > > I am going to create a Mathematica fork of Sage, where everything > in Sage will be rewritten in Mathematica. I'll start simple, say with > the basic commands on group theory and ring theory. Let's see, a name? > Got it. I'ill call the fork "Mathematica Basic Sage" or "Mathematica > BS" for short. > > Can I interest anyone in my Mathematica BS? > > > On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Marshall Hampton <hampto...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> I am deeply disappointed in the direction you are proposing. If you >> are going to switch languages at this point, it should be to a more >> modern language than Lisp. So I plan on forking the Sage project with >> a Haskell rewrite. I think time will tell which is the better choice. >> >> I am open to ideas about what a Haskell-based sage should be called. >> >> Cheers, >> Marshll Hampton >> >> On Apr 1, 12:59 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> About two years ago we made the painful transition from using Darcs to >>> Mercurial for our revision control system. This was difficult, but had >>> to be done because it was hard to get Darcs to run everywhere, and >>> there were weird corner cases where Darcs would hang. Mercurial isn't >>> optimal but it gets the job done. >>> >>> Frankly, I think we have similar problems using Python at the core of >>> Sage. I've been thinking very hard about how to deal with this for >>> nearly a year now, and have come to the conclusion that we should make >>> a switch from using Python at the core of Sage to Lisp. The >>> transition won't be easy, but it will be well worth the effort, since >>> in the time frame I have in mind (30 years, say) I see Lisp really >>> taking off, and despite its faults, anyone who has used Lisp a lot >>> knows that Lisp is clearly a far better language than Python in >>> several critical ways. The strategy for switching will go something >>> like this: >>> >>> 1. Forking: We fork clisp. We have been using clisp for several >>> years now in Sage, so we're very familiar with their build system. >>> However, they don't make regular releases, and their foreign function >>> interface is severely lacking, as is their Solaris support. So we're >>> forking, and will call the fork LispX. I've talked with Robert >>> Bradshaw about creating a new language called CylispX, which will be >>> similar to Cython but for LispX, and I'm confident we can pull this >>> off. >>> >>> 2. Porting: We have an intense sequence if "Lisp days", both >>> workshops and 1-day long IRC events, where we go line-by-line through >>> the Sage library and rewrite everything in Lisp. As we go, we'll >>> make sure that the rewritten code is always at least as fast as the >>> original code (this shouldn't be a problem, because of LispX's >>> extremely good profiling and dynamic optimization features). I hope >>> everyone here is willing to pitch in significant time to this effort. >>> If you're not, I would really like to know what your concerns are. >>> >>> 3. Polish: I estimate step 2 will take about 3 years, given the >>> amount of time it took to write the original Sage library, and also >>> the level of familiarity of most Sage developers with Lisp. Also, we >>> will likely run into subtle snags with SageLisp's interface for >>> calling C functions. But with everybody's hard work, we'll get >>> through this. >>> >>> 4. Sage-4.0: On April 1, 2012, we'll release Sage-4.0, which will be >>> the complete Lisp-rewritten version of Sage. We will then get to work >>> on porting all of the nasty C/C++/Fortran dependencies in Sage to >>> Lisp. We'll likely start with GMP/MPIR (we may have to fork, though I >>> *hope* Bill Hart will be on board), then moving onto mpfr, mpfi, >>> FLINT, PARI, etc. I estimate that with lots of hard work by everybody >>> reading this email, we can accomplish this in at most 4 years. This >>> will be a great contribution to mankind. >>> >>> 5. Finally, on April 1, 2016, we'll release Sage-5.0, the fully >>> Lisp-ified Sage. We will then get back to porting Sage to Windows, >>> Solaris, and implementing new functionality for combinatorics, linear >>> algebra, number theory, algebraic geometry, optimization, etc. >>> >>> If anybody isn't 100% convinced that this change isn't -- in the long >>> run (30 years) -- well worth our effort, please respond. >>> >>> -- Best Regards, >>> William Stein >>> >>> -- >>> William Stein >>> Associate Professor of Mathematics >>> University of Washingtonhttp://wstein.org >> >> >> > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
