> > > It may be worthwhile pondering Tim's comment... > > > "NSF will not fund software development that competes with > > existing commercial software." > > Indeed, that's irritating. What exactly does NSF mean? > > Do they mean (1) "no fund for software that competes economically with > existing commercial software" (Sage doesn't, because it is free as in > beer), or do they mean (2) "no fund for software development that > competes quality-wise with existing commercial software"? > > I could understand if NSF doesn't want to fund software developers > that want to make money by competing with commercial CAS. But I could > not understand if they denied their support to non-commercial high- > quality software projects.
My understanding, from a number of similar conversations, is that NSF doesn't feel comfortable funding proposals whose goal is to implement something essentially in commercial programs. However, if you are implementing an improvement to something that is not software, and need to improve a certain piece of software in order to do this (for instance, some curricular thingie), you can be ok. I think Geogebra would be a case in point, but there are plenty of others. Or, if you are implementing something that really doesn't exist in any other software, or not to that efficiency, you can be funded to do it in an existing package. I presume this is how Sage has gotten most of its funding thus far, though no one has directly responded to rjf's question on this point. If I'm not mistaken, the abstracts of those proposals are available on the NSF website? By the way, apropos of computational mathematics, AMS has a new book out on computational topology for beginners... sounds like it's time to implement persistent homology? I didn't see that on the list. Certainly it could be worth contacting some of those folks, unless it's in Sage... http://chomp.rutgers.edu/ has GPL software with a Python GUI, for instance, and presumably people like Robert Ghrist are doing lots with this computationally... - kcrisman -- 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
