ahmet alper parker wrote: > Also, why not give them some real life example for why to use a > free/opensource program instead of a commercial one. I think this is > far more important then money. In example, one of a professor at my > university has written a program on a language which has no support > now. And everything he has written for hydraulics engineering has to > be converted to some means of other programming tools, etc. I still > remember the vb6.0 and .net problem (http://classicvb.org/). > Predictable life cycle is a crucial topic.
There is a *lot* on the web about the advantages, and disadvantages of open-source software. http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Advantages_open_source_soft.html http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles5/open-source-software.htm http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=376255 I think it would be unwise to waste time replicating too much of that, but if targeted specially at Sage vs the commercial competition, it could be very useful. You raise some interesting points there. As you rightly say, money is not the only reason for choosing open source. I can give you a couple of examples why the fact software is free can be seen as a *disadvantage*. 1) I once had a discussion with someone at National Instruments about making Labview free to universities. Apparently, this had been discussed internally at National Instruments, but NI felt giving Labview away free to universities, would decrease the perceived worth of Labview. 2) I once had a discussion with someone who critisied a company for using a free software product (I wont say which software for confidentiality reasons). But I pointed out to him that the free tool they were using was the best for the job. He believed the company should be using commercial software, not free software on this multi-million pound project. I'm not sure I ever convinced him, as several months later he was still winging about their use of free software. This page http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1043 claims the key advantage of open source is not cost savings. I note Wolfram Research have a page comparing Mathematica to the competition in 30 other fields or products - from hand calculators, mathematical tables, other computer algebra systems etc etc. They really have done the hard sell there. http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/analysis/ The link to that page can be found on the Mathematica home page, (just click on 'How Mathematica Compares'). In fact, it is one of the most prominent links on the Mathematica homepage at http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematic Clearly the marketing people working for WRI consider it important to point out the advantages of the product compared to the competition. That 'sales pitch' is not seen on the Sage web site. Many people may consider that a good thing. Someone trying too hard to sell a product can be *very* off-putting. But I think *some* marketing ideas are needed on the Sage web site. Obvious things to compare Sage to would be * Matlab * Mathematica * Maple * Spreadsheets * Powerpoint Whatever you think of Mathematica, you must admit it has been a marketing success, making a lot of money for the very modest and humble Steven Wolfram. Their marketing people must be doing something right. Dave --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
