On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 01:24:24PM +0200, Nathann Cohen wrote:
> I never claimed that graph theory was not a subfield of combinatorics.
> What I fight against is this group's pretense to control everything
> that is connected with combinatorics, by 'coining' a general
> mathematical term. Sage-combinat is a group headed by people who use
> "combinat" code to request funding for their own ends, and I want to
> make it very very clear that whoever claims that the work I put into
> Sage's graph library is part of sage-combinat will see me claim the
> opposite, every single time. By personnal letters sent to the funding
> agencies if needed.
Perfect: there is nothing to fight about then. Of course, when talking
to fellow researchers, I often advertised all the great features Sage
has that can be useful to people doing combinatorics; and this
includes graph theory, linear algebra, number theory, etc. But I don't
think anybody ever claimed that the graph theory code was part of the
"Sage-Combinat code". Well except you, about some chunks of the graph
theory code where I and a few others happened to implement features we
were missing :-)
In fact, even the notion of "Sage-Combinat code" is rather
meaningless. Sage-Combinat is not a library. It's just a community of
people that share some common interests in "improving Sage for
combinatorics ... and fostering code sharing in this area".
Early on, Sage-Combinat was a relatively well-defined small group of
people collaborating on the same foundations, which required tight
coordination. It has now grown to the point that it's progressively
dissolving into a nebula of subcommunities of Sage developers centered
on specific areas (Coxeter groups, crystals, symmetric functions,
enumerative combinatorics, ...). Drawing a line between those
communities and other subcommunities within Sage is becoming rather
meaningless.
That's great. In fact, it's all I have every wished for. When you
create an informal structure of some sort for a specific goal, the
best that can happen is when this structure becomes useless because
the main goal is being reached: it has become natural for many
researchers in combinatorics to get involved, share their code, and
collaborate.
Some people, including me, have spent a great deal of time and energy
in the last 15 years for this to happen. Did this have an influence?
Or would this have happened anyway? That's not for me to judge. Yet I
believe it's fair for me (and others!) to report on this hard work in
applications to support the fact that, maybe, I have a bit of
experience in coordinating projects.
> I already took it very very bad to see in the H2020 proposal that
> "Paris-Sud" was one of the main centers for Sage development, where
> basically nobody but me contributes in this area (and I was not part
> of this proposal).
The proposal building was completely open and you have been welcome at
every step of it. You still are, if you wish. If the phrasing for the
description of Paris Sud did not suit you, you could have requested a
change. You could even have made a pull request.
That being said, the description of the local context in the proposal
seems rather suitable to me. It's just a fact that the University
Paris Sud physically hosts one of the largest groups of Sage
contributors, especially if you include people from nearby
institutions (not that it means so much given that the Sage community
is dispersed by nature). There is no question that you are currently
the most active dev at UPsud in terms of #tickets, etc). But it's not
being claimed that this activity has a priori any relation with the
H2020, except that it's at the same physical location.
Just two last notes:
- The H2020 has basically nothing to do with combinatorics (except for
one or two tasks).
- It's a lot about offering to some people the opportunity to devote
all their work time to improving Sage and sister projects. I agree,
it's only for four years. Permanent positions would be much better;
we will also work on this, but occasions are rare. As a small
compensation the salary is ok; as you mentioned elsewhere
potentially larger than yours. Potentially larger than mine, for
that matter.
Cheers,
Nicolas
--
Nicolas M. Thiéry "Isil" <nthi...@users.sf.net>
http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/
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