On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 12:27 PM, John H Palmieri <jhpalmier...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Nov 23, 11:18 am, Simon King <simon.k...@nuigalway.ie> wrote: >> Hi William! >> >> On 23 Nov., 18:55, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >> [...] >> >> > Maxima started in the 1960s, whereas Singular, Pari, GAP are from the >> > 1990s, right? Venerable = "accorded a great deal of respect, esp. >> > because of age" >> >> My impression was that the word "venerable" (used *twice* in the >> proposal) by itself is very old-fashioned and rather odd in a CAS >> context. I would certainly not use the corresponding German word >> "altehrwürdig" to refer to a computer algebra system or to an NSF- >> funded winter school. To my ears, it has an ironic undertone. > > I think it sounds perhaps slightly odd, but I don't catch any irony in > it. I mean, we know something about the history and people involved > in Maxima and Sage, as well as various discussions about Maxima vs. > Sage, so it may be hard for us to read anything about both Sage and > Maxima without paying very close attention to what words are being > used and whether they are fraught with extra meaning. > > I personally don't know anything about William's experience with the > Arizona Winter School beyond what he wrote in the proposal, but > presumably he liked it when he was a grad student, since he helped to > co-organize it recently. So I interpret the use of the word > "venerable" positively in that case, and I don't think there's much > ambiguity. I think it's reasonable to expect most readers (who don't > have any knowledge of past Sage-Maxima discussions) to then read the > second instance of the word in the same way, positively. > > The proposal is certainly not meant to insult or snub Maxima (or any > other open-source free software) in any way.
That is true. In fact, I hope in the proposal to not insult or snub non-free commercial software either. William -- 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
