Simon King wrote: > Hi All! > > On 24 Nov., 01:15, rjf <fate...@gmail.com> wrote: > [...] > >> 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. > > Cheers, > Simon > > Mathematica is a commercial, for-profit organization that is the current market leader in computational mathematics. The NSF has said they will not fund software development that competes in that market. Exactly what "competes" means is open to interpretation.
Axiom's goals are all research and educational, which is exactly the reason why NSF exists. I hardly expect Mathematica to release a fully open, fully literate version that can be used as teaching material for computational mathematics so I don't see the competitive aspects. As I understand Sage's stated goal, the project IS intended to compete with, and displace the current commercial software products of Mathematica, Maple, Magma, and Matlab. (I may be wrong but that's my impression from reading the mailing list and other sources). So, given the premise that NSF will not fund competing software and Sage is competing software therefore..... Sage will get the lion's share of funding Because logic is not a required subject. I DO hope that NSF funds Sage heavily. I want you guys to be very successful. I want the next generation to HAVE a computational mathematics program that is open source because I fear that the failure of the commercial software will bring the whole subject into the dark ages. Does Sage also compete with Axiom? Ummm, nobody cares, including me. Tim -- 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
