[sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
I don't think it's a bad idea to make something partly commercial. From the moral point of view I may cite Richard Stallmann ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html ): Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding. Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on. Making money of opensource is not a bad thing. One can sell service, support and simple methods to work everything out of the box and maybe some nice extras. The people who don't need this fancy stuff and are able to type 'make' in their shell can still download the source and get everything working on their own. That's the way many commercial Open Source projects like Red Hat Enterprice, Android, or even Numpy work. What should be avoided is of course making parts of the 'core' sage closed source. This should only maybe affect maybe some webapp stuff. (Why not sell a nice app on Google play?) Sage is made from volunteer work, and taking money for service is fine, as long active developers who spend their freetime in making sage better still have the right to get their software free of charge, and don't have drawbacks in using it. On Friday, August 15, 2014 10:42:14 AM UTC+2, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote: As I understand it, the SageMathCloud is closed source. Yet it is making extensive use of open-source code. Maybe the closed source bits don't link to the open-source bits, though I find it a bit hard to believe. If it did not link, it would not that be against the GPL? Or I guess if the code is not distibuted, but only kept on a server, it probably gets around the GPL. If not against the GPL, this certainly seems to be going against the *spirit* of the Sage project. It looks as though the intention is to charge for access to a web service which makes use of open-source code developed by many - myself included. One might argue it is the same with any web service making use of Apache for example, although I still think a closed-source SageMathCloud is pushing the limits of what some (myself included), find morally acceptable. The only comment on the Wikipedia talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SageMathCloud says Unfortunately, some part of it is becoming closed source. And, they will charge for the many of the services... I don't know who wrote that, but it was not me. Maybe it is legal. I don't think it is morally right. Dave -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
Yo ! Seems like some people forget that, you have to play the game in order to be successful. On the other hand, some people think that they need to play some kind of game. Who is the craziest ? The game could broadly be described as: navigating the framework of society. That framework whether you like it or not, is and likely will continue to be composed largely of money. How does your view of life, the universe and everything where everything is composed largely of money explains things like free software being developped by free volunteers ? Unless you are willing to accept things like ideals and the humans that are fighting for them, it will leave a lot of things unexplained. Especially when we talk about Sage. The game consists for everyone, as we all play it, and of anything really, buying milk at the grocery store, making a product successful/popular/accessible etc, there are boundaries and limits that as mentioned, are usually monetary in nature. Hopefully this makes sense so far lol. Your ill-intended attempt at making me accept your views just because I drink chocolate milk in the morning has failed. One of the limits that Sage has encountered against so far, as William explicitly points out, is money. William probably only counts the money he spends himself. Count the money that states pay as the salary of Sage's developpers, and the picture becomes a bit different. Back to the game side of things, all the benefits of SMC came and and continue to come at a cost, the servers and infrastructure cost money. That's easy to forget if you use SMC just as a black box sort of thing. But how else would you do this without cost? Make some sort of distributed Computer Algebra System or something? There is no way else, there will always be a cost, money, in trying to acheive Sage's Mission: Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab. This thread was about how SMC is NOT Sage. You cannot come now and tell us that a free software like Sage needs money to pay for the SMC servers. On the other hand, if you accept that the two are different, it all becomes very natural: some company which sells an online service is being built, the money they need for their servers is currently being paid by the states in different forms, but they want to become a for-profit company. Thus they will have to earn money in some way, by selling stuff. That's the hard life of those who are willing to play the money game to achieve their ends, isn't it ? William even explicitly mentions having to play the game in his blog post. If you don’t play the game, you lose. Just as an example, since it Magma gets brought up alot, as per Magma's Website: I take it as a proof that you can easily lose your soul when you look for money. The development of Sage may not go as fast as you want, but because of the way it is developped there is no risk of having to do what Magma does, i.e. deprive students of a tool just because it does not pay sufficiently. What could happen if SMC does not get enough money to pay for its servers ? Or just does not bring enough money ? Or just could bring more money ? That's for-profit companies. And nobody has any control over that except the head of the company, while in Sage there is some kind of fundamental democracy. I have no idea what Magma's Mission is, and it doesnt matter, as im not comparing/contrasting them here, i just post that from their website to show people, detractors/haters of SMC that theres others in the game as well, trying to achieve whatever their goal is, but bound by same limits as sage, money. Many of the detractors/haters of SMC are also those who write Sage's code, and Sage's code is what -- accept it or not -- you sell with SMC. Officially all you sell is an online access and cool interface, but -- guess what If SMC exists, doesn't it mean that making Sage work on Windows, or improving its interface, or making it lighter/easier to install... Isn't all this going against SMC interests ?... Crazy, isn't it ? SMC's business is partly to compensate for Sage's faults with a for-profit company. But if those problems get addressed in Sage itself someday, it will probably hurt SMC a bit. Isn't it funny that some Sage defenders are not as interested as before in improving Sage itself, because Sage's losses are SMC's wins ? Sage's Mission, its goal, is lofty, so if your a person that loves sage but hates all or just some of SMC, then your free to never use SMC and can just view it as playing the game. And I do not like that game. Nathann -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
As far as i understand, the current plan is to spend the money made by SMC (if it makes money, some day) to improve Sage (for example, to hire paid programmers that would work into the windows port). So, if things don't deviate from that plan, the gain of SMC would also turn into a gain for Sage. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
Seems like some people forget that, you have to play the game in order to be successful. The game could broadly be described as: navigating the framework of society. That framework whether you like it or not, is and likely will continue to be composed largely of money. The game consists for everyone, as we all play it, and of anything really, buying milk at the grocery store, making a product successful/popular/accessible etc, there are boundaries and limits that as mentioned, are usually monetary in nature. Hopefully this makes sense so far lol. One of the limits that Sage has encountered against so far, as William explicitly points out, is money. Sage MathCloud (SMC) among other things, makes Sage more accessible to people as no local installation is needed, among other benefits. The barrier to entry to having access to a world class piece of mathematics software, is incredibly low with SMC. Back to the game side of things, all the benefits of SMC came and and continue to come at a cost, the servers and infrastructure cost money. That's easy to forget if you use SMC just as a black box sort of thing. But how else would you do this without cost? Make some sort of distributed Computer Algebra System or something? There is no way else, there will always be a cost, money, in trying to acheive Sage's Mission: *Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab.* William even explicitly mentions having to play the game in his blog post. If you don’t play the game, you lose. Just as an example, since it Magma gets brought up alot, as per Magma's Website: Availability of a student version A student version of Magma is available. The only difference between it and the full version is that the memory usage is restricted to 150MB. The student version is now *only available* through *educational institutions*. See (ii) — (iv) below. We regret to announce that the supply of a restricted version of Magma for a small price to students enrolled at a college or university has been *discontinued* for the time being. The costs associated with distributing and supporting the student versions have become far greater than the income received from student licences and we are not in a position to cross-subsidise these costs. ... Developing countries Users from newly industrialised and developing countries may apply for Magma licences at a reduced rate, by special agreement. I have no idea what Magma's Mission is, and it doesnt matter, as im not comparing/contrasting them here, i just post that from their website to show people, detractors/haters of SMC that theres others in the game as well, trying to achieve whatever their goal is, but bound by same limits as sage, money. Sage's Mission, its goal, is lofty, so if your a person that loves sage but hates all or just some of SMC, then your free to never use SMC and can just view it as *playing the game*. On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 2:35:13 AM UTC-7, Nathann Cohen wrote: About William's blog post (*): even though I don't like you do much (but I don't like what a lot of persons do, so apparently there is nothing wrong in that), I was wondering about your plans. If you ever end up earning money with this for-profit company you have in mind, who would you hire to write Sage code ? What I mean is that I feel safe when I write graph code, but that I am afraid of touching group stuff, or categories. I would not dare writing any statistics-related stuff (it was too long ago), nor differential equations, nor symbolics... Well, not anything else, actually. And so I felt that one perso can write code for his specific domain, and not for a lot of other things. Sooo I wondered. Where do you think you could find guys able to work on Sage who you could hire for a long time, i.e. with in mind that they have several years of work ahead of them, probably on different mathematical topics. Even though I guess you also want to expand non-mathematical parts of Sage, i.e. some infrastructure, or support on new platforms, things like that. Just wondering. Nathann (*) It made me laugh at first. Recently our former president Nicolas Sarkozy was arrested because of one of the + procedures against him (like hundreds of others are, daily). The following day, he was at prime time on the TV explaining why he did not deserve any different justice than the one given to any normal citizen, and why everything against him was a conspiracy. Most other persons can't do that. It made me laugh because you answered a sage-devel thread on a blog. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
While the subject line is somewhat inflammatory, I respectfully disagree that civil discussion about Sage's relationship to other software projects, especially one so tightly coupled with Sage, belongs entirely on sage-flame. +1 Nathann -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
About William's blog post (*): even though I don't like you do much (but I don't like what a lot of persons do, so apparently there is nothing wrong in that), I was wondering about your plans. If you ever end up earning money with this for-profit company you have in mind, who would you hire to write Sage code ? What I mean is that I feel safe when I write graph code, but that I am afraid of touching group stuff, or categories. I would not dare writing any statistics-related stuff (it was too long ago), nor differential equations, nor symbolics... Well, not anything else, actually. And so I felt that one perso can write code for his specific domain, and not for a lot of other things. Sooo I wondered. Where do you think you could find guys able to work on Sage who you could hire for a long time, i.e. with in mind that they have several years of work ahead of them, probably on different mathematical topics. Even though I guess you also want to expand non-mathematical parts of Sage, i.e. some infrastructure, or support on new platforms, things like that. Just wondering. Nathann (*) It made me laugh at first. Recently our former president Nicolas Sarkozy was arrested because of one of the + procedures against him (like hundreds of others are, daily). The following day, he was at prime time on the TV explaining why he did not deserve any different justice than the one given to any normal citizen, and why everything against him was a conspiracy. Most other persons can't do that. It made me laugh because you answered a sage-devel thread on a blog. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
None of these arguments make any sense. If you want to run a local server with sage, you are very welcome to use the sage notebook that is distributed with sage itself. Also, this thread should definitely not be in sage-devel. On Monday, August 18, 2014 7:45:36 AM UTC+8, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote: I think the whole closed source nature is likely to restrict the takeup of Sage for several broad groups of people when they realise that to get high performance they are going to need to store sensitive material on a Linux server they don't control. As a 50 year old engineer I have worked at three institutions who I know would not want to put workbooks on a server outside their institution. a) Ministry of Defence - no way. b) Airbus - no way. They are very strict on security. c) Marconi - most unlikely. 1) Many commercial companies are not going to be so keen to put commercially sensitive material on a server they don't control. Interlecural property is valuable company asset. Suddenly buying distributed licenses for Mathematica is more attractive from a security point of view. At least Wolfram Research can't look at what you are doing. 2) Military users are very unlikely to start working on something on a distributed system they can't totally control. 3) Some academics, especially those working on mathematics in areas they know UW specialise in, would perhaps no want to put worksheets on a server they know prying eyes will see. Why let someone else look at what you are working on and possibly beat you to publish a paper? 4) Some individuals are just paranoid and will not use a distributed system they don't control. No doubt HTTPS will be used to encrypt data in transit. Maybe worksheets are stored in an encrypted format on disk. But at some stage the data going to be in plain text. Has anyone working on SageMathCloud ever considered that certain users would not want data stored in a manner they have no control over? Dave. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:24:32AM -0700, Robert Bradshaw wrote: We had this in the form of the original sage notebook for years. Yes, it had its problems, but universities didn't step up to fix them (or replace it with something better). Few others than William hosted such servers of significance. Indeed. Yet many institutions did setup local servers, some of non trivial sizes. At the very least, this did help quite some to reduce the access barrier to Sage -- the whole point of Sage -- at least within those institutions. Cheers, Nicolas FWIW, my personal point of view: I find it great that William and others spend a lot of energy exploring ways to lower the access barrier to Sage. I am not necessarily convinced that some of this energy would not be better used in different approaches. But since they do the work, they get to choose whichever strategy they believe in. And since its outside of Sage itself, I find it legitimate that they choose whatever license they see fit (not so keen on the big fat advertisement on sagemath.org though). That being said, as long as I won't have the possibility to run an open source copy of SMC (possibly stripped of its high-availability part) on my local machine / cloud, or at the very least easily recover all my data in a usable form, I personally won't use it, and won't recommend using it. -- Nicolas M. Thiéry Isil nthi...@users.sf.net http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
While the subject line is somewhat inflammatory, I respectfully disagree that civil discussion about Sage's relationship to other software projects, especially one so tightly coupled with Sage, belongs entirely on sage-flame. (Yes, debating the morality/legality of it belongs there, but recognizing that people are concerned about this is different.) On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) drkir...@kirkbymicrowave.co.uk wrote: I think the whole closed source nature is likely to restrict the takeup of Sage for several broad groups of people when they realise that to get high performance they are going to need to store sensitive material on a Linux server they don't control. I think there's some miss-understanding here, SMC is not about high performance, and the computational portion is no more distributed than what Sage provides alone, out of the box. As a 50 year old engineer I have worked at three institutions who I know would not want to put workbooks on a server outside their institution. a) Ministry of Defence - no way. b) Airbus - no way. They are very strict on security. c) Marconi - most unlikely. Not the target audience. 1) Many commercial companies are not going to be so keen to put commercially sensitive material on a server they don't control. Interlecural property is valuable company asset. Suddenly buying distributed licenses for Mathematica is more attractive from a security point of view. At least Wolfram Research can't look at what you are doing. 2) Military users are very unlikely to start working on something on a distributed system they can't totally control. 3) Some academics, especially those working on mathematics in areas they know UW specialise in, would perhaps no want to put worksheets on a server they know prying eyes will see. Why let someone else look at what you are working on and possibly beat you to publish a paper? 4) Some individuals are just paranoid and will not use a distributed system they don't control. No doubt HTTPS will be used to encrypt data in transit. Maybe worksheets are stored in an encrypted format on disk. But at some stage the data going to be in plain text. Has anyone working on SageMathCloud ever considered that certain users would not want data stored in a manner they have no control over? Certainly. SMC is should not be in any way a prerequisite for using Sage. Clearly this isn't stated as explicitly as it should be. Another analogy: Externally hosted webmail lowers the barrier of entry for using email, but the additional cost and hassle of maintaining ones own email server (individually or otherwise) is the right alternative for those who are capable and value higher control over their own data. Frankly, most individuals (and many institutions) aren't very good at controlling their own setups, but some are and using Sage this way should always be available and provide the same core functionality. - Robert -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
Wow, this ended up much less flame-like than I had anticipated - yeah! barrier to Sage. I am not necessarily convinced that some of this energy would not be better used in different approaches. But since they do the work, they get to choose whichever strategy they believe This is probably fairly close to my view as well. or at the very least easily recover all my data in a usable form, I personally won't use it, and won't recommend using it. Can one download .sagews files easily? (I assume so.) How different is that format from .sws ? I heard there was conversion sws - sagews, but I don't think there was any the other way. I guess one would need a %md to html translator, but there seem to be quite a few of those out there. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 11:40 PM, kcrisman kcris...@gmail.com wrote: I heard there was conversion sws - sagews, but I don't think there was any the other way. Until there is a better solution, you can open up a terminal and do something like $ zip -r takeout.zip * and download the takeout.zip file. Yes, an official converter for sagws files is also missing, but it's really easy to write your own. For example, here is one, independently made, from the community: https://github.com/madars/sagews2txt Adding support for %md cells is trivial, because there is at least one markdown library for python. The hard part is to figure out how to deal with all the corner cases. -- H -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-sagemathcloud-lets-clear-some.html -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org wst...@uw.edu -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
Sorry for the delay, had a quarrel with myself about it. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 3:02 AM, Thierry sage-googlesu...@lma.metelu.net wrote: What's the spirit of the Sage project? It's mission statement? The mission statement is about a free open source alternative, which SMC is not. True, SMC's mission statement is as different one. One of the two is about *creating* a mathematical software system, the other one about actually *running* mathematical software online (aka cloud). SMC has the mission to accomplish this for the scientific Python stack, R, octave, M2, GAP, and of course Sage. To make the distinction even more clear: there is no goal of explicitly implementing a mathematical concept in SMC. Rather, it is all about boring non-mathematical stuff like UI, backup, backend administration, distributed databases etc. The user-base could be even larger if every university (or whatever) could host its own local cloud and freely adapt it (e.g. translations, ldap interface, ...). Could be, yes, but given the existing circumstances this is not the case and such a system doesn't fall from the sky. Therefore my statement is true and your could be even larger outside the feasible realm. It's a nice wish-to-have, yes. I'm also all in for cooking up another software project, which is an SMC-like open-source equivalent. By the closed-source nature of SMC, the University of Washington can impose moral considerations to the users of SMC : if UW considers that some user does not use SMC in a moral way, it can delete its account, and the user will not be able to connect elsewhere to still enjoy its features. Well, I have a two-part answer to this: Imagine everything of SMC is fully free software. Even in this case, the entity providing the service would terminate a user's account if the user would start doing bad things, e.g. criminal activities. So, your closed-source implication is also true in the free-software case. Given my previous statement is wrong, and the operators would be - due to the free-software nature of the service you are providing - unable to restrict access of malicious users violating the TOS agreement, this would be a strong argument for not disclosing any of the platform's software! (Besides that, I don't think that's true … I suspect I would be already aware of this.) My core argument is, that merely implanting Sage in different environments doesn't diminish its value or functionality. The environments could be even more diverse if SMC was free software and widely spread, its quality could be improved if it could be run on various clusters. Same could be argument, see above. Your arguments are good, but they all support the open-sourcing of SMC, which was Dave's point (if i understand correctly). I'm not against open sourcing SMC, I don't know why you have come to that conclusion. Above, you brought up an interesting point, which (if true) would support closing up all cloud services even more. Finally, if you do not like SMC, ignore it. As long as there is a huge advertising of SMC on the sagemath.org front page, … this is not really possible. So, it's about the banner. That's certainly an fine line which we can discuss. My understanding of advertising is that others pay you for space on your website. That didn't happen. To me, the rationale is rather the opposite: by promoting a way to access and use Sage more easily, it is increasing its awareness, colleges talk about it, blogposts happen, etc. An increased adoption of Sage is beneficial for it, because developers are proportional to the user-base. … and even better, Sage development can be done on SMC, too. Hence in my eyes this banner actually helps Sage. Going through the Sage website with your definition of advertising, we would also have to get rid of smaller things as well. For example: [1] The author of this product most certainly earned some income with it. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Cryptography-Open-Source-Mathematics-Applications/dp/143982570X/ and since the development of SMC is (partially) funded by the Sage foundation (whose aim is To support the development of the mathematical software system SAGE.), I don't know much about this since I'm not part of it. The larger question is the dependency of Sage on UW in general. By stating that, I'm not implying that I want to get rid of UW in that equation, but rather introduce new moving parts supporting Sage. An European-based foundation (NPO), strengthening ties to EU universities, etc. -- H -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
I think the whole closed source nature is likely to restrict the takeup of Sage for several broad groups of people when they realise that to get high performance they are going to need to store sensitive material on a Linux server they don't control. As a 50 year old engineer I have worked at three institutions who I know would not want to put workbooks on a server outside their institution. a) Ministry of Defence - no way. b) Airbus - no way. They are very strict on security. c) Marconi - most unlikely. 1) Many commercial companies are not going to be so keen to put commercially sensitive material on a server they don't control. Interlecural property is valuable company asset. Suddenly buying distributed licenses for Mathematica is more attractive from a security point of view. At least Wolfram Research can't look at what you are doing. 2) Military users are very unlikely to start working on something on a distributed system they can't totally control. 3) Some academics, especially those working on mathematics in areas they know UW specialise in, would perhaps no want to put worksheets on a server they know prying eyes will see. Why let someone else look at what you are working on and possibly beat you to publish a paper? 4) Some individuals are just paranoid and will not use a distributed system they don't control. No doubt HTTPS will be used to encrypt data in transit. Maybe worksheets are stored in an encrypted format on disk. But at some stage the data going to be in plain text. Has anyone working on SageMathCloud ever considered that certain users would not want data stored in a manner they have no control over? Dave. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
I agree with Harald that this discussion belongs on the sage-flame mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sage-flame On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) drkir...@kirkbymicrowave.co.uk wrote: I think the whole closed source nature is likely to restrict the takeup of Sage for several broad groups of people when they realise that to get high performance they are going to need to store sensitive material on a Linux server they don't control. As a 50 year old engineer I have worked at three institutions who I know would not want to put workbooks on a server outside their institution. a) Ministry of Defence - no way. b) Airbus - no way. They are very strict on security. c) Marconi - most unlikely. 1) Many commercial companies are not going to be so keen to put commercially sensitive material on a server they don't control. Interlecural property is valuable company asset. Suddenly buying distributed licenses for Mathematica is more attractive from a security point of view. At least Wolfram Research can't look at what you are doing. 2) Military users are very unlikely to start working on something on a distributed system they can't totally control. 3) Some academics, especially those working on mathematics in areas they know UW specialise in, would perhaps no want to put worksheets on a server they know prying eyes will see. Why let someone else look at what you are working on and possibly beat you to publish a paper? 4) Some individuals are just paranoid and will not use a distributed system they don't control. No doubt HTTPS will be used to encrypt data in transit. Maybe worksheets are stored in an encrypted format on disk. But at some stage the data going to be in plain text. Has anyone working on SageMathCloud ever considered that certain users would not want data stored in a manner they have no control over? Dave. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org wst...@uw.edu -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 6:02 PM, Thierry sage-googlesu...@lma.metelu.net wrote: Hi, On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 08:52:03AM -0700, Harald Schilly wrote: This should be moved to sage-flame. On Friday, August 15, 2014 10:42:14 AM UTC+2, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote: If not against the GPL, this certainly seems to be going against the *spirit* of the Sage project. What's the spirit of the Sage project? It's mission statement? The mission statement is about a free open source alternative, which SMC is not. Yes. However, SageMathCloud != Sage, in fact, far from it. The closest analogy I can come up with is github vs. git. Github is a for-profit web service run on closed-source software that owes its existence to the completely open source git. On the balance I would say that its existence is a net positive for the git project. The (lack of) lock in story is much easier and more transparent with github, but I am hopeful that SageMathCloud will become similar. Please explain. In particular, how making an almost unmodified version of Sage available to a much larger user-base with a greatly reduced level of entrance (i.e. creating a login credentials vs. downloading 1GB, installing VirtualBox and running a virtual machine) has any implications besides fulfilling the mission... The user-base could be even larger if every university (or whatever) could host its own local cloud and freely adapt it (e.g. translations, ldap interface, ...). We had this in the form of the original sage notebook for years. Yes, it had its problems, but universities didn't step up to fix them (or replace it with something better). Few others than William hosted such servers of significance. I may have drunk the cloud kool-aid, but I don't think most people actually want to manage their own local clouds (though I'll admit that wanting to be *able* to, despite not wanting to actually do it, is a legitimate request). Dealing with the whole stack--everything from hardware up to spammers--is a lot of work and it often makes sense to hire this out. Maybe it is legal. I don't think it is morally right. Everyone contributing to Sage is hopefully aware that it is GPL licensed. The core essence of GPLed code is that it can be used for any purposes - free (as in beer), commercial, medical, military, energy, etc. [0] For me it would be morally questionable, if e.g. you would impose moral considerations about how the code should be used. In particular, who gives *you* the legitimacy to decide what is a moral use and what is not a moral use? Nobody should have that. By the closed-source nature of SMC, the University of Washington can impose moral considerations to the users of SMC : if UW considers that some user does not use SMC in a moral way, it can delete its account, and the user will not be able to connect elsewhere to still enjoy its features. This is not a purely closed vs. open source issue--letting someone else host the service even if the entire stack were open exposes you to this danger. (If it were open sourced, you could theoretically take your pick of providers, or run a cloud yourself, but given the experience with the original sage notebook I don't know that this would actually happen very often.) While I don't find the you can't use our service any more inconvenient, the only thing I have a visceral reaction to is loosing access to all your data. I'd like SMC to have a clear story around this similar to Google's Data Libration Front. The personal use SMC plays into this as well. That being said, I too would like to see more of SMC released under an open source license, and sooner. But to me the data story is even more urgent. The fact that project histories are stored in a git-like format means that this shouldn't be too hard technically. [0] freedom 0, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html My own point of view is that there are great examples where using open-sourced code for different circumstances improves it's quality. e.g. Linux Kernel, Mozilla Project, … My core argument is, that merely implanting Sage in different environments doesn't diminish its value or functionality. The environments could be even more diverse if SMC was free software and widely spread, its quality could be improved if it could be run on various clusters. Your arguments are good, but they all support the open-sourcing of SMC, which was Dave's point (if i understand correctly). Finally, if you do not like SMC, ignore it. As long as there is a huge advertising of SMC on the sagemath.org front page, and since the development of SMC is (partially) funded by the Sage foundation (whose aim is To support the development of the mathematical software system SAGE.), this is not really possible. There is also the huge opportunity cost that William Stein, and those he's hired, have spent the last several years developing SMC rather than Sage itself. The jury is still
[sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
As I understand it, the SageMathCloud is closed source. Yet it is making extensive use of open-source code. Maybe the closed source bits don't link to the open-source bits, though I find it a bit hard to believe. If it did not link, it would not that be against the GPL? Or I guess if the code is not distibuted, but only kept on a server, it probably gets around the GPL. Correct. Sage is not AGPL. If not against the GPL, this certainly seems to be going against the *spirit* of the Sage project. It looks as though the intention is to charge for access to a web service which makes use of open-source code developed by many - myself included. One might argue it is the same with any web service making use of Apache for example, although I still think a closed-source SageMathCloud is pushing the limits of what some (myself included), find morally acceptable. I will purposely ignore the flamefest sure to follow any license discussion ;-) but will just say that William has already BSD-licensed some of the code related to this, so it's not even now as bad as all that. My understanding is that long-term closing the source for the NoSQL-type database interactions is so that someone unconnected to Sage can't also charge for Sage-as-a-service (at least not without developing their own way of doing it); there may be other reasons (like raising funds for Sage development). But William has committed several times to making a personal use version that wouldn't be scalable to thousands of users that uses an open-source license, once SMC is not quite as beta. So even for those of us who would prefer a different licensing scheme, I don't think the commitment to open source math has changed here, though I sympathize with your comments and voiced similar ones a couple years ago. Naturally, there are those who would prefer all code be open, and others that all code be closed... but given that we have a project with many different opinions on the universality of it, and that Sage itself is not affected, probably this is as good of a compromise that one could get. Now let the flamefest begin! (Or, if we all are gentle to one another, let it NOT begin...) - kcrisman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
On 2014-08-15, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) drkir...@kirkbymicrowave.co.uk wrote: As I understand it, the SageMathCloud is closed source. Yet it is making extensive use of open-source code. Maybe the closed source bits don't link to the open-source bits, though I find it a bit hard to believe. If it did not link, it would not that be against the GPL? Or I guess if the code is not distibuted, but only kept on a server, it probably gets around the GPL. If not against the GPL, this certainly seems to be going against the *spirit* of the Sage project. It looks as though the intention is to charge for access to a web service which makes use of open-source code developed by many - myself included. One might argue it is the same with any web service making use of Apache for example, although I still think a closed-source SageMathCloud is pushing the limits of what some (myself included), find morally acceptable. The only comment on the Wikipedia talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SageMathCloud says Unfortunately, some part of it is becoming closed source. And, they will charge for the many of the services... I don't know who wrote that, but it was not me. FYI, it has been announced that a normal individual use of SMC will stay free. Maybe it is legal. I don't think it is morally right. I thought the Communist Party of UK has disbanded itself long ago :-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
IANAL, but my understanding is that the licensing of the code that William wrote for the servers that run SMC would only be relevant if the code is distributed. That is, the license of a software is an agreement that happens in the moment of the distribution. The license stablishes the conditions for both the distributer and the receiver of the copy. If there is no distribution (that is, if the software is only used by its creator), it makes no sense to talk about the license. In fact, if the problem is that the GPL demands that the code that links against it is GPL, William could state that his code is also GPL; just he would not distribute it to anybody. That does not violate the GPL. GPL does not force you to distribute the code, just forces you to distribute it in source form IF you distribute it in binary form. On the other hand, ii recall William saying that keeping the high availability code of SMC for his own was a condition that UW imposed for funding it. If some day William, or the UW decides to license his code to somebody, we can talk about the legality of the license chosen, depending on how it links to GPL code. But as long as that licensing does not happen, i see no violation of GPL at all, neither in the letter nor in the spirit. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
This should be moved to sage-flame. On Friday, August 15, 2014 10:42:14 AM UTC+2, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote: If not against the GPL, this certainly seems to be going against the *spirit* of the Sage project. What's the spirit of the Sage project? It's mission statement? Please explain. In particular, how making an almost unmodified version of Sage available to a much larger user-base with a greatly reduced level of entrance (i.e. creating a login credentials vs. downloading 1GB, installing VirtualBox and running a virtual machine) has any implications besides fulfilling the mission... Maybe it is legal. I don't think it is morally right. Everyone contributing to Sage is hopefully aware that it is GPL licensed. The core essence of GPLed code is that it can be used for any purposes - free (as in beer), commercial, medical, military, energy, etc. [0] For me it would be morally questionable, if e.g. you would impose moral considerations about how the code should be used. In particular, who gives *you* the legitimacy to decide what is a moral use and what is not a moral use? Nobody should have that. [0] freedom 0, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html My own point of view is that there are great examples where using open-sourced code for different circumstances improves it's quality. e.g. Linux Kernel, Mozilla Project, … My core argument is, that merely implanting Sage in different environments doesn't diminish its value or functionality. Finally, if you do not like SMC, ignore it. H -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
Since you mention looking on Wikipedia for more info on SageMathCloud, just thought id let you know that William writes about SageMathCloud on his Sage blog at: http://sagemath.blogspot.com/ , in case you hadn’t come across it. As it has a lot of information about SMC. On Friday, August 15, 2014 1:42:14 AM UTC-7, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote: As I understand it, the SageMathCloud is closed source. Yet it is making extensive use of open-source code. Maybe the closed source bits don't link to the open-source bits, though I find it a bit hard to believe. If it did not link, it would not that be against the GPL? Or I guess if the code is not distibuted, but only kept on a server, it probably gets around the GPL. If not against the GPL, this certainly seems to be going against the *spirit* of the Sage project. It looks as though the intention is to charge for access to a web service which makes use of open-source code developed by many - myself included. One might argue it is the same with any web service making use of Apache for example, although I still think a closed-source SageMathCloud is pushing the limits of what some (myself included), find morally acceptable. The only comment on the Wikipedia talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SageMathCloud says Unfortunately, some part of it is becoming closed source. And, they will charge for the many of the services... I don't know who wrote that, but it was not me. Maybe it is legal. I don't think it is morally right. Dave -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: SageMathCloud / closed source / GPL / Spirit of Sage??
Hi, On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 08:52:03AM -0700, Harald Schilly wrote: This should be moved to sage-flame. On Friday, August 15, 2014 10:42:14 AM UTC+2, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote: If not against the GPL, this certainly seems to be going against the *spirit* of the Sage project. What's the spirit of the Sage project? It's mission statement? The mission statement is about a free open source alternative, which SMC is not. Please explain. In particular, how making an almost unmodified version of Sage available to a much larger user-base with a greatly reduced level of entrance (i.e. creating a login credentials vs. downloading 1GB, installing VirtualBox and running a virtual machine) has any implications besides fulfilling the mission... The user-base could be even larger if every university (or whatever) could host its own local cloud and freely adapt it (e.g. translations, ldap interface, ...). Maybe it is legal. I don't think it is morally right. Everyone contributing to Sage is hopefully aware that it is GPL licensed. The core essence of GPLed code is that it can be used for any purposes - free (as in beer), commercial, medical, military, energy, etc. [0] For me it would be morally questionable, if e.g. you would impose moral considerations about how the code should be used. In particular, who gives *you* the legitimacy to decide what is a moral use and what is not a moral use? Nobody should have that. By the closed-source nature of SMC, the University of Washington can impose moral considerations to the users of SMC : if UW considers that some user does not use SMC in a moral way, it can delete its account, and the user will not be able to connect elsewhere to still enjoy its features. [0] freedom 0, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html My own point of view is that there are great examples where using open-sourced code for different circumstances improves it's quality. e.g. Linux Kernel, Mozilla Project, … My core argument is, that merely implanting Sage in different environments doesn't diminish its value or functionality. The environments could be even more diverse if SMC was free software and widely spread, its quality could be improved if it could be run on various clusters. Your arguments are good, but they all support the open-sourcing of SMC, which was Dave's point (if i understand correctly). Finally, if you do not like SMC, ignore it. As long as there is a huge advertising of SMC on the sagemath.org front page, and since the development of SMC is (partially) funded by the Sage foundation (whose aim is To support the development of the mathematical software system SAGE.), this is not really possible. Ciao, Thierry -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
