On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Florent Hivert <florent.hiv...@univ-rouen.fr> wrote: > Hi There, > > On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 03:41:46PM -0600, Jason Grout wrote: >> mark mcclure wrote: >> > On Nov 23, 3:30 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> That is true. In fact, I hope in the proposal to not insult or snub >> >> non-free commercial software either. >> > >> > But William, just two days ago on sage-support you wrote: >> > "Let's put Mathworks out of business." >> > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support/browse_thread/thread/b56450bab6d43bf7/a82a770db1abd6dc#msg_d72f94b7ff856c29 >> > >> > So I wonder, what is your true feeling on this matter? >> > >> > To be clear, I am not attempting to be inflammatory. >> > I have been genuinely interested in Sage for a couple >> > years and have used it for real mathematics sporadically. >> > I could even imagine jumping into Sage development but I >> > have been *very* put off by the outright hostile stance >> > frequently expressed towards the commercial systems on >> > the sage discussion groups. >> >> >> Let it be clear that the opinion expressed above is William's opinion >> (maybe in a moment of frustration about the patent business?). I have a >> lot of respect for Cleve and what he's done, and don't feel like my >> purpose for involvement is to put Mathworks out of business. In fact >> (as William has expressed elsewhere about commercial software), I'm >> *glad* that Mathworks is dumping (millions of?) dollars into math >> software development. That's a great thing for mathematics and >> mathematics software. Patenting some of the (obvious?) things they've >> patented makes me sad, though. > > Speaking specifically about Mathworks, I just want to recall what happen > to MuPAD: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuPAD > > "In September 2008, Sciface was purchased by Mathworks and the Mupad code was > included in the Symbolic Math Toolbox add-on for MATLAB. On 28 September 2008, > Mupad was withdrawn from market as a software product in its own right." > > See: > > http://www.mathworks.com/support/faq/mupad.html > > In the operation, several friend there lost their job (actually this in not > Mathworks fault and probably the result of Sciface being bought by Mathworks > is > that some of them keep their job)... > > I'm not sure anyone in this sharks market will care a cent about putting sage > down... > Florent
How do you imagine that one of those sharks could "put Sage down"? I'm genuinely curious, because I don't see how *they* can. The obvious attacks that come to mind are: * Sage is totally immune to what happened to Mupad, since the copyright ownership of Sage is spread across hundreds of individuals. * A direct FUD attack would likely raise Sage's profile (since people would wonder why Ma* is suddenly so worried). * A frivolous patent lawsuit. This could scare people and hurt individuals. But is it a likely course of action by the Ma's, given their past activities? Also, similar bullying against open source, e.g., by SCO have not gone so well for the aggressors. Now, having actually talked with people from at least Magma, Mathematica, and Maple, I think the more likely attack is: * Work their assess off to innovate and create a better product. It's an honest "attack", and that's exactly what I would expect from the people working at the Ma's. Perhaps, I'm young and naive, but I think they are by and large good and honest people. I think this sort of competition is an overall plus for end users, in the long run. -- 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
