Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
Bonjour Bernard, On Wed, Sep 03, 2014 at 12:42:51PM -0700, parisse wrote: >I'm reading the european grant project description on >https://github.com/sagemath/grant-europe/ and I have no idea whether >the software would be free or not. In fact since the project in its >current state is asking more than half of the money for software >engineers mostly for implementing non mathematical aspects, I'm afraid >it would end up developping non-free software around sage, more or less >like the SMC. Thanks for pointing this out. No worry, I'll never ever get deeply involved in a grant where not all produced code is open source :-) Cherry on the cake: on that particular call, it's written explicitly that the delivered code (and data! and publications!) shall be open. I'll clarify this on the project page. Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry "Isil" 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 10:03:52AM -0700, Bill Hart wrote: >To my knowledge, the European Union funding agencies did not have a >significant stake in the origin and development of Sage, Indeed, and this is by design :-) Well, at least in my little world. My strategy has always been bottom-up. First get people to do the actual work. Then, as minimally needed, look for funding. For its first ten years, *-Combinat was only funded indirectly through research grants that had some computational aspects. In general, the Sage ecosystem has progressively grown big in Europe with little direct funding. Now we have reached a point where it's time to change that! Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry "Isil" 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 05:06:37PM +0530, Nicolas M. Thiery wrote: > On my side, I am going to coordinate a European grant application > (submission: January 2015) around the Sage ecosystem (including GAP, > Pari, ...), with main goal to fund a couple full time devs over the > next few years: > > https://github.com/sagemath/grant-europe ... Thanks everyone for your feedback, insight, and food for thought! Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry "Isil" 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Saturday, 30 August 2014 11:49:10 UTC+2, Viviane Pons wrote: > > From what I understand, nobody here is saying what *should* be but more > how it is. I think the debate on whether people support one way or another > is mostly irrelevant here, even so, I do understand the frustration and I > do think myself that all this national stuff is quite stupid. > Well, my opinion is irrelevant, but I personally think you get it. > > Anyway, here's my point of view on "why Europe should support Sage for > pro-Europe reason" and I would like the opinion of some of you here who > seem to know more on how these fundings work. > > Sage is definitely NOT a American project. It is not own by any American > university, it is used and constructed by many researcher in world, > especially by many European people. To support that fact, we have indeed > the many Sage days which have been organized in Europe with European funds. > I understand from your comments that we really have to emphasize this. > Right. > So Sage is needed and used by many European researchers. If Europe is not > funding Sage, then those researcher rely on Amercian fundings to go to Sage > days, to use servers etc. European funds could be used for opening a Sage > service on some servers, just as SMC in Washington. > Yes. > (Nothing against SMC but it would make sense to have our own service in > Europe that does not depend on an American university). > Ah. > My point here is mostly: if Europe don't fund Sage then Sage is becoming > de-facto an American project (through funding) and it should not be this > way... > Ah. > > I don't really have time to develop that here, but I'd like to know if > emphasizing this necessity for Europe to fund Sage sound like a good > strategy. There is no "European-Sage" that should be developed against the > "American-sage", there's a "International-Sage" and Europe should be part > of it. > I agree fully. There definitely should not be an American Sage or European Sage. That would be a disaster. > > I must say that this national way of thinking is not natural for me or for > any of the Sage developers who are going to write this application. We have > to find a way to defend the utility of Sage for Europe without being too > much in a contradiction with own beliefs in open-source and border-free > development models. > I agree with your sentiments exactly. I actually wrote a long list of suggestions. But I decided to delete it. I don't really have time to defend any of the suggestions or be involved myself. And I've never applied for one of these things. Better to contact some people who have been successful with these things. But my suggestions can be summarised anyway, as follows: * think big, really big, double it, triple it, triple it again * identify a specific core goal of the project, e.g. an innovation you have prototyped and want to bring to fruition. This should have broad application. * get numerous beneficiary organisations on board with the project and identify precisely how your innovation will benefit them * get numerous contributing organisations on board with the project and identify precisely how you will leverage their expertise and how they will contribute and why * identify how your project or innovation will impact the economy: a spin off company based around the innovation is a pretty good way * build a network of scientists who will support the proposal in real terms, including some big names if possible * if you want it to be an international project rather than European, identify international partners and what they will contribute * figure out how your project is leveraging existing European expertise, infrastructure and assets (especially scientific ones) * leave out personal, pet projects that have no broad application * identify a realistic strategy for meeting *all* the goals, including a timeline (this should include details of what and when partners will contribute) * don't name drop organisations and individuals that are not an integral part of your strategy or who won't really benefit (please) I wish you the best of luck. Bill. > 2014-08-30 10:46 GMT+02:00 William A Stein >: > >> On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Bill Hart > > wrote: >> > >> > >> > On Saturday, 30 August 2014 00:35:01 UTC+2, Robert Bradshaw wrote: >> >> >> >> On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 5:03 AM, Bill Hart >> >> wrote: >> >> > >> >> > On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism >> >> >> rears >> >> >> its head. I thought the time where we only support German science >> were >> >> >> over... >> >> >> >> +1 >> >> >> >> > You have misunderstood. When applying for German funding, the rules >> will >> >> > naturally state that the project must benefit the people paying for >> the >> >> > work, namely German companies and Mutter und Vater taxpay
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Saturday, 30 August 2014 11:52:48 UTC+2, Harald Schilly wrote: > > That escalated quickly … > > > On Friday, August 29, 2014 12:46:14 PM UTC+2, Bill Hart wrote: > > Why is this important? Because otherwise you would be taking European > money and using it to fund a project which originated in the US (I think it > fair to call it a US project). > > Remember Nov 23rd, 2009 (!)? No? > > I posted here: "Sage is now an European project!!!" [1] > > "now" should be at the end I guess, sorry bad grammar, besides that what I > meant to say is that the european website activity grew higher than in the > US. In fact, my feeling is that the US is a really bad turf for Sage. I > know, website activity is not all, but it is a very good indicator about > who is in general interested in Sage. I hope we can agree on that. > Yes. > > > Looking at the stats right now, what are the top ~20 cities for this year? > Any clue? > > New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Beijing, Los Angeles, Seoul, Seattle, > Moscow, Sydney, Bangalore, Bogota, Chicago, Zagreb, Mexico City, Toronto, > Melbourne, Chennai, Berlin, Mumbai, Shanghai, Seville, Barcelona, Montreal. > > I call *that* diversity. > Yes. > > Finally, I don't see any reason why this is an issue at all. > Me either. > An open codebase implies internationality. Period. > Exactly. > There are no boundaries any more and any benefit for some is automatically > the benefit of everyone. I'm glad to be interested in things like maths, > programming and music, which do not have any inherent boundaries. Only, if > Sage would be something like an accounting software - and which would also > only work well for US businesses with their accounting rules - it would be > really questionable to invest in it from the European perspective. > > [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sage-devel/SBSG6WXMW5c/nfKH8SO863UJ > > About the part with the underlying programming language > > > ... people maintaining the Singular interpreter, language, > > kernel and libraries, ... > > It's a bit scary that you have to invest much into maintaining the core > execution part. That's a huge thing you have to drag around and since there > is no application of this core singular part, you do not get external > contributors. Compare this to using an existing popular programming > language, which also happens to have an interactive mode. You do not have > to really care about all this! It's just there. > Well, you don't have to sell that particular idea to me. But the Singular project has numerous constraints, and they are working within those constraints. The main constraint is what their users and developers want. > And with "just there", I also mean the things you didn't mention: > debugger, line-by-line benchmarks, memory profiler, ... > Yeah I know. They are missing out big time. But their aims are quite different to what yours or mine might be. Bill. -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Saturday, 30 August 2014 10:47:08 UTC+2, wstein wrote: > > On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Bill Hart > wrote: > > > > > > On Saturday, 30 August 2014 00:35:01 UTC+2, Robert Bradshaw wrote: > >> > >> On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 5:03 AM, Bill Hart > >> wrote: > >> > > >> > On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: > >> >> > >> >> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism > >> >> rears > >> >> its head. I thought the time where we only support German science > were > >> >> over... > >> > >> +1 > >> > >> > You have misunderstood. When applying for German funding, the rules > will > >> > naturally state that the project must benefit the people paying for > the > >> > work, namely German companies and Mutter und Vater taxpayer. > >> > > >> > When applying for European funding, the rules will naturally state > that > >> > the > >> > funding must benefit the people paying for the work, namely the > European > >> > Union members. > >> > >> I would say that the beneficiaries are (1) those funded to do the work > >> and (2) all users of the work. It's not like the money would go to the > >> US or even "the project." > > > > > > Then the grant would be rejected. > > > >> > >> > >> > The idea that European funds should be used primarily to support an > >> > international project *with no direct benefit to European projects* > >> > invoked > >> > in the grant is patently a non-starter. That's just as bad, in my > >> > opinion, > >> > as taking public funds to work on a closed source mathematical > system! > >> > >> You're a big fan of Julia. However, would you argue that European > >> funds should not be used to support it because it's not a "European > >> Project?" > > > > > > Yes. > > Would you argue that American funds should not be used to support > Pari, Singular, GAP, etc., etc., because they are not "American > Projects"? > I suspect you'd have similar rules. If not, there's a lot of American taxpayers that wouldn't be very happy about it. > > >> I'd say the criteria would be whether Europeans benefit from > >> Julia (and I one could argue from a protectionist economic perspective > >> whether Europeans are the ones being paid to do the work, though I'd > >> just rather pay the best available person). > >> > >> Sadly, if the people judging these grants have this perspective, one > >> might have to sell efforts like "sage-combinat" as a "European > >> project" rather than part of Sage. > > > > > > Yes. > > Would you argue that American funds should not be used to support > sage-combinat?(In fact, the NSF has directly funded sage-combinat > [1].) > I don't know anything about sage-combinat. > > Or do you apply a double standard for European funds versus outside funds? > > And most importantly when you say "should" above, do you mean: > > [ ] you think this is the way it *should* be, or > > [ ] you simply mean that you believe -- via your reading of the EU > grant guidelines -- that this is how it *is* right now. There's an > enormous difference between these two choices. > > I'm not going to answer silly questions like this. My political opinions are my own business. I'm quite irritated right now. Bill. > > [1] Linked NSF grant funding sage-combinat > ( > http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearchResult?QueryText=sage-combinat&ActiveAwards=true&#results): > > > > Collaborative Research: SI2-SSE: Sage-Combinat: Developing and Sharing > Open Source Software for Algebraic Combinatorics > Award Number:1147161; Principal Investigator:Gregg Musiker; > Co-Principal Investigator:; Organization:University of Minnesota-Twin > Cities;NSF Organization:ACI Award Date:06/01/2012; Award > Amount:$195,688.00; Relevance:48.77; > > Collaborative Research: SI2-SSE: Sage-Combinat: Developing and Sharing > Open Source Software for Algebraic Combinatorics > Award Number:1147802; Principal Investigator:William Stein; > Co-Principal Investigator:; Organization:University of Washington;NSF > Organization:ACI Award Date:06/01/2012; Award Amount:$97,114.00; > Relevance:48.77; > > Collaborative Research: SI2-SSE: Sage-Combinat: Developing and Sharing > Open Source Software for Algebraic Combinatorics > Award Number:1147463; Principal Investigator:Daniel Bump; Co-Principal > Investigator:; Organization:Stanford University;NSF Organization:ACI > Award Date:06/01/2012; Award Amount:$143,700.00; Relevance:48.77; > > Collaborative Research: SI2-SSE: Sage-Combinat: Developing and Sharing > Open Source Software for Algebraic Combinatorics > Award Number:1147247; Principal Investigator:Anne Schilling; > Co-Principal Investigator:; Organization:University of > California-Davis;NSF Organization:ACI Award Date:06/01/2012; Award > Amount:$216,626.00; Relevance:47.98; > > > > >> > >> > >> I, personally, don't see Sage as belonging to Europeans, it belongs to > >> Math
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
That escalated quickly … > On Friday, August 29, 2014 12:46:14 PM UTC+2, Bill Hart wrote: > Why is this important? Because otherwise you would be taking European money and using it to fund a project which originated in the US (I think it fair to call it a US project). Remember Nov 23rd, 2009 (!)? No? I posted here: "Sage is now an European project!!!" [1] "now" should be at the end I guess, sorry bad grammar, besides that what I meant to say is that the european website activity grew higher than in the US. In fact, my feeling is that the US is a really bad turf for Sage. I know, website activity is not all, but it is a very good indicator about who is in general interested in Sage. I hope we can agree on that. Looking at the stats right now, what are the top ~20 cities for this year? Any clue? New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Beijing, Los Angeles, Seoul, Seattle, Moscow, Sydney, Bangalore, Bogota, Chicago, Zagreb, Mexico City, Toronto, Melbourne, Chennai, Berlin, Mumbai, Shanghai, Seville, Barcelona, Montreal. I call *that* diversity. Finally, I don't see any reason why this is an issue at all. An open codebase implies internationality. Period. There are no boundaries any more and any benefit for some is automatically the benefit of everyone. I'm glad to be interested in things like maths, programming and music, which do not have any inherent boundaries. Only, if Sage would be something like an accounting software - and which would also only work well for US businesses with their accounting rules - it would be really questionable to invest in it from the European perspective. [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sage-devel/SBSG6WXMW5c/nfKH8SO863UJ About the part with the underlying programming language > ... people maintaining the Singular interpreter, language, > kernel and libraries, ... It's a bit scary that you have to invest much into maintaining the core execution part. That's a huge thing you have to drag around and since there is no application of this core singular part, you do not get external contributors. Compare this to using an existing popular programming language, which also happens to have an interactive mode. You do not have to really care about all this! It's just there. And with "just there", I also mean the things you didn't mention: debugger, line-by-line benchmarks, memory profiler, ... -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
>From what I understand, nobody here is saying what *should* be but more how it is. I think the debate on whether people support one way or another is mostly irrelevant here, even so, I do understand the frustration and I do think myself that all this national stuff is quite stupid. Anyway, here's my point of view on "why Europe should support Sage for pro-Europe reason" and I would like the opinion of some of you here who seem to know more on how these fundings work. Sage is definitely NOT a American project. It is not own by any American university, it is used and constructed by many researcher in world, especially by many European people. To support that fact, we have indeed the many Sage days which have been organized in Europe with European funds. I understand from your comments that we really have to emphasize this. So Sage is needed and used by many European researchers. If Europe is not funding Sage, then those researcher rely on Amercian fundings to go to Sage days, to use servers etc. European funds could be used for opening a Sage service on some servers, just as SMC in Washington. (Nothing against SMC but it would make sense to have our own service in Europe that does not depend on an American university). My point here is mostly: if Europe don't fund Sage then Sage is becoming de-facto an American project (through funding) and it should not be this way... I don't really have time to develop that here, but I'd like to know if emphasizing this necessity for Europe to fund Sage sound like a good strategy. There is no "European-Sage" that should be developed against the "American-sage", there's a "International-Sage" and Europe should be part of it. I must say that this national way of thinking is not natural for me or for any of the Sage developers who are going to write this application. We have to find a way to defend the utility of Sage for Europe without being too much in a contradiction with own beliefs in open-source and border-free development models. Cheers Viviane 2014-08-30 10:46 GMT+02:00 William A Stein : > On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Bill Hart > wrote: > > > > > > On Saturday, 30 August 2014 00:35:01 UTC+2, Robert Bradshaw wrote: > >> > >> On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 5:03 AM, Bill Hart > >> wrote: > >> > > >> > On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: > >> >> > >> >> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism > >> >> rears > >> >> its head. I thought the time where we only support German science > were > >> >> over... > >> > >> +1 > >> > >> > You have misunderstood. When applying for German funding, the rules > will > >> > naturally state that the project must benefit the people paying for > the > >> > work, namely German companies and Mutter und Vater taxpayer. > >> > > >> > When applying for European funding, the rules will naturally state > that > >> > the > >> > funding must benefit the people paying for the work, namely the > European > >> > Union members. > >> > >> I would say that the beneficiaries are (1) those funded to do the work > >> and (2) all users of the work. It's not like the money would go to the > >> US or even "the project." > > > > > > Then the grant would be rejected. > > > >> > >> > >> > The idea that European funds should be used primarily to support an > >> > international project *with no direct benefit to European projects* > >> > invoked > >> > in the grant is patently a non-starter. That's just as bad, in my > >> > opinion, > >> > as taking public funds to work on a closed source mathematical system! > >> > >> You're a big fan of Julia. However, would you argue that European > >> funds should not be used to support it because it's not a "European > >> Project?" > > > > > > Yes. > > Would you argue that American funds should not be used to support > Pari, Singular, GAP, etc., etc., because they are not "American > Projects"? > > >> I'd say the criteria would be whether Europeans benefit from > >> Julia (and I one could argue from a protectionist economic perspective > >> whether Europeans are the ones being paid to do the work, though I'd > >> just rather pay the best available person). > >> > >> Sadly, if the people judging these grants have this perspective, one > >> might have to sell efforts like "sage-combinat" as a "European > >> project" rather than part of Sage. > > > > > > Yes. > > Would you argue that American funds should not be used to support > sage-combinat?(In fact, the NSF has directly funded sage-combinat > [1].) > > Or do you apply a double standard for European funds versus outside funds? > > And most importantly when you say "should" above, do you mean: > > [ ] you think this is the way it *should* be, or > > [ ] you simply mean that you believe -- via your reading of the EU > grant guidelines -- that this is how it *is* right now. There's an > enormous difference between these two choices. > > > > [1] Linked NSF grant funding sage-combinat > ( > http://www.nsf.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Bill Hart wrote: > > > On Saturday, 30 August 2014 00:35:01 UTC+2, Robert Bradshaw wrote: >> >> On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 5:03 AM, Bill Hart >> wrote: >> > >> > On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: >> >> >> >> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism >> >> rears >> >> its head. I thought the time where we only support German science were >> >> over... >> >> +1 >> >> > You have misunderstood. When applying for German funding, the rules will >> > naturally state that the project must benefit the people paying for the >> > work, namely German companies and Mutter und Vater taxpayer. >> > >> > When applying for European funding, the rules will naturally state that >> > the >> > funding must benefit the people paying for the work, namely the European >> > Union members. >> >> I would say that the beneficiaries are (1) those funded to do the work >> and (2) all users of the work. It's not like the money would go to the >> US or even "the project." > > > Then the grant would be rejected. > >> >> >> > The idea that European funds should be used primarily to support an >> > international project *with no direct benefit to European projects* >> > invoked >> > in the grant is patently a non-starter. That's just as bad, in my >> > opinion, >> > as taking public funds to work on a closed source mathematical system! >> >> You're a big fan of Julia. However, would you argue that European >> funds should not be used to support it because it's not a "European >> Project?" > > > Yes. Would you argue that American funds should not be used to support Pari, Singular, GAP, etc., etc., because they are not "American Projects"? >> I'd say the criteria would be whether Europeans benefit from >> Julia (and I one could argue from a protectionist economic perspective >> whether Europeans are the ones being paid to do the work, though I'd >> just rather pay the best available person). >> >> Sadly, if the people judging these grants have this perspective, one >> might have to sell efforts like "sage-combinat" as a "European >> project" rather than part of Sage. > > > Yes. Would you argue that American funds should not be used to support sage-combinat?(In fact, the NSF has directly funded sage-combinat [1].) Or do you apply a double standard for European funds versus outside funds? And most importantly when you say "should" above, do you mean: [ ] you think this is the way it *should* be, or [ ] you simply mean that you believe -- via your reading of the EU grant guidelines -- that this is how it *is* right now. There's an enormous difference between these two choices. [1] Linked NSF grant funding sage-combinat (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearchResult?QueryText=sage-combinat&ActiveAwards=true&#results): Collaborative Research: SI2-SSE: Sage-Combinat: Developing and Sharing Open Source Software for Algebraic Combinatorics Award Number:1147161; Principal Investigator:Gregg Musiker; Co-Principal Investigator:; Organization:University of Minnesota-Twin Cities;NSF Organization:ACI Award Date:06/01/2012; Award Amount:$195,688.00; Relevance:48.77; Collaborative Research: SI2-SSE: Sage-Combinat: Developing and Sharing Open Source Software for Algebraic Combinatorics Award Number:1147802; Principal Investigator:William Stein; Co-Principal Investigator:; Organization:University of Washington;NSF Organization:ACI Award Date:06/01/2012; Award Amount:$97,114.00; Relevance:48.77; Collaborative Research: SI2-SSE: Sage-Combinat: Developing and Sharing Open Source Software for Algebraic Combinatorics Award Number:1147463; Principal Investigator:Daniel Bump; Co-Principal Investigator:; Organization:Stanford University;NSF Organization:ACI Award Date:06/01/2012; Award Amount:$143,700.00; Relevance:48.77; Collaborative Research: SI2-SSE: Sage-Combinat: Developing and Sharing Open Source Software for Algebraic Combinatorics Award Number:1147247; Principal Investigator:Anne Schilling; Co-Principal Investigator:; Organization:University of California-Davis;NSF Organization:ACI Award Date:06/01/2012; Award Amount:$216,626.00; Relevance:47.98; >> >> >> I, personally, don't see Sage as belonging to Europeans, it belongs to >> Mathematicians. >> >> > One of the biggest things European software projects like Pari, Gap, >> > Singular need is contributions. I congratulate Peter Bruin on announcing >> > that he is writing a power series module for Sage based on Pari instead of >> > on polynomials. However, in a project like that, I hope that when some >> > functionality (mathematical or otherwise) is perceived to be missing from >> > Pari, that it will be contributed *to the Pari project directly*. And I >> > don't mean as a set of Sage build patches or bug reports. I mean as a set >> > of >> > Pari contributions, to their code base, in their coding style, instead of >> > writing more code in Sage directly! >> >> I strongly disagree that
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Saturday, 30 August 2014 00:35:01 UTC+2, Robert Bradshaw wrote: > > On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 5:03 AM, Bill Hart > wrote: > > > > On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: > >> > >> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism > rears > >> its head. I thought the time where we only support German science were > >> over... > > +1 > > > You have misunderstood. When applying for German funding, the rules will > > naturally state that the project must benefit the people paying for the > > work, namely German companies and Mutter und Vater taxpayer. > > > > When applying for European funding, the rules will naturally state that > the > > funding must benefit the people paying for the work, namely the European > > Union members. > > I would say that the beneficiaries are (1) those funded to do the work > and (2) all users of the work. It's not like the money would go to the > US or even "the project." > Then the grant would be rejected. > > > The idea that European funds should be used primarily to support an > > international project *with no direct benefit to European projects* > invoked > > in the grant is patently a non-starter. That's just as bad, in my > opinion, > > as taking public funds to work on a closed source mathematical system! > > You're a big fan of Julia. However, would you argue that European > funds should not be used to support it because it's not a "European > Project?" Yes. > I'd say the criteria would be whether Europeans benefit from > Julia (and I one could argue from a protectionist economic perspective > whether Europeans are the ones being paid to do the work, though I'd > just rather pay the best available person). > > Sadly, if the people judging these grants have this perspective, one > might have to sell efforts like "sage-combinat" as a "European > project" rather than part of Sage. > Yes. > > I, personally, don't see Sage as belonging to Europeans, it belongs to > Mathematicians. > > > One of the biggest things European software projects like Pari, Gap, > Singular need is contributions. I congratulate Peter Bruin on announcing > that he is writing a power series module for Sage based on Pari instead of > on polynomials. However, in a project like that, I hope that when some > functionality (mathematical or otherwise) is perceived to be missing from > Pari, that it will be contributed *to the Pari project directly*. And I > don't mean as a set of Sage build patches or bug reports. I mean as a set > of Pari contributions, to their code base, in their coding style, instead > of writing more code in Sage directly! > > I strongly disagree that the best (or only) way to contribute to Sage > is to contribute to some of its component projects, I didn't say it was. > and writing more > code in Sage directly should be discouraged. Sage is *much* more than > just glue, I didn't say that. > which is the perspective you seem to be coming from. That's > not to discount the enormous value these projects add to Sage (and it > often makes little sense to re-implement existing code) but taking the > attitude that all new work should be done in sub-projects and wrapped > by Sage is not the best approach, or in my opinion the best way to > make a good product. > > I didn't say that. > Here's some disadvantages of contributing the code directly to X as > opposed to Sage: > >* It narrows the pool of potential contributors. >* It may not be the best choice of language for a high level > algorithm. (Many of these projects were started before high(er) level > languages were even an option.) >* Languages, style, conventions (e.g. Pari memory management), > development procedures, etc. are not transferable to working on > sub-product Y or Z or Sage itself. >* It's harder to find and read the source (unless we make the > command-line ?? somehow descend into C libraries), but even then > there's probably more indirection. >* It makes it more difficult to integrate with other systems. E.g. > if you find yourself needing an algorithm that's in Y but not in X you > can't use it. >* It requires the additional step of writing and maintaining > wrappers for use in Sage. It's also a two (or more) step process to > get the code in X and start using it in Sage (possibly along with Y or > Z). > No wonder the libraries aren't getting contributions. > > I'm not passing judgement on this particular patch, nor saying we > shouldn't contribute to sub projects like Pari where it makes sense > (especially bug fixes), but there are significant drawbacks as well. > > I'm also not saying that everything should be implemented in Sage > directly. There are things where it makes much more sense to provide a > low-level library, in particular functionality with a well-defined > purpose and API (e.g. linear algebra, arbitrary precision integers, > .
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 4:16 PM, Francesco Biscani wrote: > I don't have any direct experience with EU funding, but I did work at a > European-level institution (ESA) for a few years and I must say that what > Bill says rings true to my ears. You have to understand that anything > "European" is really undertaken by a patchwork of different nations pulling > towards different directions and often competing with each other. ESA for > instance has a policy of "geographic return" that regulates many aspects of > the activity of the agency, from hiring to funding: > > http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Industry/Industry_how_to_do_business/Industrial_policy_and_geographical_distribution > > Any type of interaction with non-European entities is very complicated, to > the point, e.g., of requiring special permission from upper management to > hire unpaid interns from outside Europe. Going to conferences outside Europe > is very difficult. When we started SOCIS some years ago, > > http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis/ > > I remember going through numerous meetings in which we had to came up with a > way to make the project "European", whereas our first impulse was to just > let it open to any student in the world. In the end we found a compromise in > the requirement that any participating student needs to be enrolled in a > European University. > > I have no difficulties believing the EU operates under similar constraints. Fair point. The NSF and other US agency funding often come with similar restrictions... > On 29 August 2014 19:03, Bill Hart wrote: >> >> To be fair, in context, you were talking about nationalism and objecting >> to me apparently characterising Sage as a US project. The *mathematical* >> diversity of the contributors is completely tangential to that argument. >> >> I think I made my argument transparent enough. You aren't going to help >> European mathematical software projects, such as the ones listed, by >> applying for money to work directly on Sage. Referees will see through it >> immediately if you try to make that claim. >> >> To my knowledge, the European Union funding agencies did not have a >> significant stake in the origin and development of Sage, but the NSF and >> other US institutions did. From the point of view of the European Union, as >> far as I can tell, Sage is a US originating project. As such, you aren't >> going to have a chance of convincing them that development of Sage is >> funding a European software project! >> >> On the other hand, a European software project, which is focused on >> cooperation (at the technical and professional level) of existing European >> mathematical software projects, *whether or not* making use of Sage, can be >> sold to referees and stakeholders. Then, as was pointed out by someone else, >> you make the case that Sage is an *international collaboration*, not a US >> project. At that level, Sage is not a US project. >> >> But any European project must really and substantially benefit European >> software projects and the primary impact should be to the European economy! >> >> My very first sentence was "Nicolas, I wish you the best with a European >> grant based on Sage." Indeed, I hope a large scale European software project >> based on Sage is successful. But it needs to directly address the issue of >> how it helps mathematical software developed here in Europe. I hope it is >> also clear from those words that I was fully anticipating that Nicolas did >> have have in mind something of great benefit to those of us in Europe >> working on libraries and software projects used by Sage! >> >> It's difficult to come up with an example that makes the European >> situation clear, since for example Magma has received substantial funding >> from the US, precisely because it benefits US stakeholders. That in spite of >> the fact that most of its IP belongs to USyd. However, the argument would be >> similar if I applied for money from the EU to develop Magma on account of it >> having a numerous developers in Europe and that it uses European developed >> software libraries. Obviously the primary beneficiaries in such an >> arrangement would be Australian taxpayers and certainly not those European >> software projects! Referees just aren't going to go for that. >> >> That doesn't mean that Magma can't be part of the overall strategy of such >> a grant, as I'm sure is the case for a number of projects funded from within >> the EU currently. But it can't be the focus of such a grant. >> >> Anyway, we've drifted way off topic. I merely wanted to encourage Nicolas, >> to mention some of the things that I personally think might be factors in >> such a proposal being successful in Europe, and to vaguely bring his >> attention to other similar efforts, without getting deeply involved myself >> (I'm just a lowly postdoc and have no say in these matters). >> >> I'm sorry I wasn't clearer in the first instance. I hope I'm being clear >> now. >> >> Bill. >> >> On Frid
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
I don't have any direct experience with EU funding, but I did work at a European-level institution (ESA) for a few years and I must say that what Bill says rings true to my ears. You have to understand that anything "European" is really undertaken by a patchwork of different nations pulling towards different directions and often competing with each other. ESA for instance has a policy of "geographic return" that regulates many aspects of the activity of the agency, from hiring to funding: http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Industry/Industry_how_to_do_business/Industrial_policy_and_geographical_distribution Any type of interaction with non-European entities is very complicated, to the point, e.g., of requiring special permission from upper management to hire unpaid interns from outside Europe. Going to conferences outside Europe is very difficult. When we started SOCIS some years ago, http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis/ I remember going through numerous meetings in which we had to came up with a way to make the project "European", whereas our first impulse was to just let it open to any student in the world. In the end we found a compromise in the requirement that any participating student needs to be enrolled in a European University. I have no difficulties believing the EU operates under similar constraints. On 29 August 2014 19:03, Bill Hart wrote: > To be fair, in context, you were talking about nationalism and objecting > to me apparently characterising Sage as a US project. The *mathematical* > diversity of the contributors is completely tangential to that argument. > > I think I made my argument transparent enough. You aren't going to help > European mathematical software projects, such as the ones listed, by > applying for money to work directly on Sage. Referees will see through it > immediately if you try to make that claim. > > To my knowledge, the European Union funding agencies did not have a > significant stake in the origin and development of Sage, but the NSF and > other US institutions did. From the point of view of the European Union, as > far as I can tell, Sage is a US originating project. As such, you aren't > going to have a chance of convincing them that development of Sage is > funding a European software project! > > On the other hand, a European software project, which is focused on > cooperation (at the technical and professional level) of existing European > mathematical software projects, *whether or not* making use of Sage, can be > sold to referees and stakeholders. Then, as was pointed out by someone > else, you make the case that Sage is an *international collaboration*, not > a US project. At that level, Sage is not a US project. > > But any European project must really and substantially benefit European > software projects and the primary impact should be to the European economy! > > My very first sentence was "Nicolas, I wish you the best with a European > grant based on Sage." Indeed, I hope a large scale European software > project based on Sage is successful. But it needs to directly address the > issue of how it helps mathematical software developed here in Europe. I > hope it is also clear from those words that I was fully anticipating that > Nicolas did have have in mind something of great benefit to those of us in > Europe working on libraries and software projects used by Sage! > > It's difficult to come up with an example that makes the European > situation clear, since for example Magma has received substantial funding > from the US, precisely because it benefits US stakeholders. That in spite > of the fact that most of its IP belongs to USyd. However, the argument > would be similar if I applied for money from the EU to develop Magma on > account of it having a numerous developers in Europe and that it uses > European developed software libraries. Obviously the primary beneficiaries > in such an arrangement would be Australian taxpayers and certainly not > those European software projects! Referees just aren't going to go for that. > > That doesn't mean that Magma can't be part of the overall strategy of such > a grant, as I'm sure is the case for a number of projects funded from > within the EU currently. But it can't be the focus of such a grant. > > Anyway, we've drifted way off topic. I merely wanted to encourage Nicolas, > to mention some of the things that I personally think might be factors in > such a proposal being successful in Europe, and to vaguely bring his > attention to other similar efforts, without getting deeply involved myself > (I'm just a lowly postdoc and have no say in these matters). > > I'm sorry I wasn't clearer in the first instance. I hope I'm being clear > now. > > Bill. > > On Friday, 29 August 2014 17:10:53 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: >> >> On Friday, August 29, 2014 1:03:06 PM UTC+1, Bill Hart wrote: >>> >>> What sets Sage apart from GAP/Singular (and, I dare say: Flint) is the scale and the diversity of its contributors. >>
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 5:03 AM, Bill Hart wrote: > > On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: >> >> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism rears >> its head. I thought the time where we only support German science were >> over... +1 > You have misunderstood. When applying for German funding, the rules will > naturally state that the project must benefit the people paying for the > work, namely German companies and Mutter und Vater taxpayer. > > When applying for European funding, the rules will naturally state that the > funding must benefit the people paying for the work, namely the European > Union members. I would say that the beneficiaries are (1) those funded to do the work and (2) all users of the work. It's not like the money would go to the US or even "the project." > The idea that European funds should be used primarily to support an > international project *with no direct benefit to European projects* invoked > in the grant is patently a non-starter. That's just as bad, in my opinion, > as taking public funds to work on a closed source mathematical system! You're a big fan of Julia. However, would you argue that European funds should not be used to support it because it's not a "European Project?" I'd say the criteria would be whether Europeans benefit from Julia (and I one could argue from a protectionist economic perspective whether Europeans are the ones being paid to do the work, though I'd just rather pay the best available person). Sadly, if the people judging these grants have this perspective, one might have to sell efforts like "sage-combinat" as a "European project" rather than part of Sage. I, personally, don't see Sage as belonging to Europeans, it belongs to Mathematicians. > One of the biggest things European software projects like Pari, Gap, Singular > need is contributions. I congratulate Peter Bruin on announcing that he is > writing a power series module for Sage based on Pari instead of on > polynomials. However, in a project like that, I hope that when some > functionality (mathematical or otherwise) is perceived to be missing from > Pari, that it will be contributed *to the Pari project directly*. And I don't > mean as a set of Sage build patches or bug reports. I mean as a set of Pari > contributions, to their code base, in their coding style, instead of writing > more code in Sage directly! I strongly disagree that the best (or only) way to contribute to Sage is to contribute to some of its component projects, and writing more code in Sage directly should be discouraged. Sage is *much* more than just glue, which is the perspective you seem to be coming from. That's not to discount the enormous value these projects add to Sage (and it often makes little sense to re-implement existing code) but taking the attitude that all new work should be done in sub-projects and wrapped by Sage is not the best approach, or in my opinion the best way to make a good product. Here's some disadvantages of contributing the code directly to X as opposed to Sage: * It narrows the pool of potential contributors. * It may not be the best choice of language for a high level algorithm. (Many of these projects were started before high(er) level languages were even an option.) * Languages, style, conventions (e.g. Pari memory management), development procedures, etc. are not transferable to working on sub-product Y or Z or Sage itself. * It's harder to find and read the source (unless we make the command-line ?? somehow descend into C libraries), but even then there's probably more indirection. * It makes it more difficult to integrate with other systems. E.g. if you find yourself needing an algorithm that's in Y but not in X you can't use it. * It requires the additional step of writing and maintaining wrappers for use in Sage. It's also a two (or more) step process to get the code in X and start using it in Sage (possibly along with Y or Z). I'm not passing judgement on this particular patch, nor saying we shouldn't contribute to sub projects like Pari where it makes sense (especially bug fixes), but there are significant drawbacks as well. I'm also not saying that everything should be implemented in Sage directly. There are things where it makes much more sense to provide a low-level library, in particular functionality with a well-defined purpose and API (e.g. linear algebra, arbitrary precision integers, ...). But if Sage aims to be a system useful for doing mathematics teaching and research, and has any advantage over using one of the subsystems alone, the same advantage would carry over when implementing new functionality. > Why is this important? Because otherwise you would be taking European money > and using it to fund a project which originated in the US (I think it fair to > call it a US project). It does not enrich European software to be developing > Sage. This is crucial from the point of vi
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
> > If Singular were not maintained, all those thousands of man-hours of work > would bitrot and become unavailable to the Open Source community, and it > would/could not be replaced! > The most valuable commodity of the Singular project is the existing code, > and it needs direct and continued investment to maintain that functionality > and to extend and improve it. > [...] There's no point building a dog house if you don't feed the dog! I'm with you here, so the new project should use a different funding and the funding of Singular+GAP should not be shut down (and I guess that the reviewers realize that, too) However, I predict that Singular (kernel and interpreter) will slowly fade away. Case in point. No less than 5 minutes ago, someone just showed me > parallelised polynomial factorisation code that will be in Singular > (hopefully) in the next release. It was developed as part of Singular's > Factory. That represents years of investment by the DFG. > That code, on a single core, was already faster than Magma. It is now much > faster. Not a bad investment, I'd say! > Yes, it looks like. But consider that Martin Lee (he is currently the main factory developer) leaves in a couple of weeks, but only 30 percent of the source code is documented. References to the implemented algorithms and code examples are mostly missing. There are only interface tests, no small meshed ones (that is, for every internal routine). I can't say much about factorization, but in 'char_series()', which is part of 'factory' I observed about 10 bugs in the last weeks. Does that still sound like a good investment? For me it currently sounds that without appropriate counteractions the success story may turn into a Pyrrhic victory. There has been some talk of making the Gap language a standard. Some people > seem to think it could be made so. > In comparison to Singular GAP is in my opinion the lesser of two evils. So if I would have to choose between Singular and GAP I would go with GAP. Jakob Am Freitag, 29. August 2014 16:30:43 UTC+2 schrieb Bill Hart: > > > > On Friday, 29 August 2014 15:12:05 UTC+2, Jakob Kroeker wrote: >> >> Bill Hart:: >>> ... There is a lack of documentation on what algorithms are implemented, >>> what their complexities are, or references. Some projects are not >>> threadsafe. Testing is lacking and quite a bit of stuff just doesn't work >>> and never did. And there is a general lack of credit given to individual >>> developers in Europe by their own projects. Most importantly there is a >>> culture of not giving appropriate academic credit to individuals who have >>> made significant contributions to writing mathematical software. >>> >>> I don't see that Sage has contributed to fixing a single one of these >>> hard problems. >>> >> >> I'm not sure if Singular/GAP did solve that problems either or has not >> more problems. Even if in general it is good to have alternatives (to >> Sage), in my opinion Singular+Gap is not the right way to do. >> > > I didn't know it had even had much of a chance to get going. I do know > that it needs a lot more investment of time and money. > > >> So I hope there will be a new CAS star at the sky which blasts the dated >> Singular and GAP away. >> > > I think that is the wrong approach. You are looking at it from a user's > perspective, in that you'd like to have a nice Sage-like interface with all > the functionality you require. > > But just writing a shiny new CAS doesn't give that to you. You still need > the fast Groebner basis engine underneath, and the years of development > that has gone into the multivariate arithmetic and to some extent the > thousands of man-hours that have gone into libraries that use those things > developed by mathematical researchers, who whilst working on those projects > were the leading experts in their field. > > No amount of shiny CAS or even new funding, will give that to you all over > again. > > Case in point. No less than 5 minutes ago, someone just showed me > parallelised polynomial factorisation code that will be in Singular > (hopefully) in the next release. It was developed as part of Singular's > Factory. That represents years of investment by the DFG. > > That code, on a single core, was already faster than Magma. It is now much > faster. Not a bad investment, I'd say! > > >> >> @referees: if you are reading this, just (let experts) evaluate the code >> quality (readability, test coverage, correctness, maintainability, >> extensibility,...) or the development process. You will not like the >> outcome. Every couple of days I hit a bug in Singular and meanwhile I'm not >> always officially file an issue in their bug tracking system because I was >> asked to do so. >> > > Unfortunately referees tend to not have time to examine large codebases in > detail. They will however look at things such as past return on investment, > the merits of the scientific/mathe
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
To be fair, in context, you were talking about nationalism and objecting to me apparently characterising Sage as a US project. The *mathematical* diversity of the contributors is completely tangential to that argument. I think I made my argument transparent enough. You aren't going to help European mathematical software projects, such as the ones listed, by applying for money to work directly on Sage. Referees will see through it immediately if you try to make that claim. To my knowledge, the European Union funding agencies did not have a significant stake in the origin and development of Sage, but the NSF and other US institutions did. From the point of view of the European Union, as far as I can tell, Sage is a US originating project. As such, you aren't going to have a chance of convincing them that development of Sage is funding a European software project! On the other hand, a European software project, which is focused on cooperation (at the technical and professional level) of existing European mathematical software projects, *whether or not* making use of Sage, can be sold to referees and stakeholders. Then, as was pointed out by someone else, you make the case that Sage is an *international collaboration*, not a US project. At that level, Sage is not a US project. But any European project must really and substantially benefit European software projects and the primary impact should be to the European economy! My very first sentence was "Nicolas, I wish you the best with a European grant based on Sage." Indeed, I hope a large scale European software project based on Sage is successful. But it needs to directly address the issue of how it helps mathematical software developed here in Europe. I hope it is also clear from those words that I was fully anticipating that Nicolas did have have in mind something of great benefit to those of us in Europe working on libraries and software projects used by Sage! It's difficult to come up with an example that makes the European situation clear, since for example Magma has received substantial funding from the US, precisely because it benefits US stakeholders. That in spite of the fact that most of its IP belongs to USyd. However, the argument would be similar if I applied for money from the EU to develop Magma on account of it having a numerous developers in Europe and that it uses European developed software libraries. Obviously the primary beneficiaries in such an arrangement would be Australian taxpayers and certainly not those European software projects! Referees just aren't going to go for that. That doesn't mean that Magma can't be part of the overall strategy of such a grant, as I'm sure is the case for a number of projects funded from within the EU currently. But it can't be the focus of such a grant. Anyway, we've drifted way off topic. I merely wanted to encourage Nicolas, to mention some of the things that I personally think might be factors in such a proposal being successful in Europe, and to vaguely bring his attention to other similar efforts, without getting deeply involved myself (I'm just a lowly postdoc and have no say in these matters). I'm sorry I wasn't clearer in the first instance. I hope I'm being clear now. Bill. On Friday, 29 August 2014 17:10:53 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: > > On Friday, August 29, 2014 1:03:06 PM UTC+1, Bill Hart wrote: >> >> What sets Sage apart from GAP/Singular (and, I dare say: Flint) is the >>> scale and the diversity of its contributors. >>> >> >> No, what sets it apart is the number of contributors. Flint has had >> contributors from all over the world. I would say from every continent >> except Africa and Antarctica. >> > > No, it is NOT just the number of contributors. Sage is nothing like Fint > with 20x the number of programmers. In fact, all of your posts generally > come from that assumption, but it couldn't be further from the truth. > > When I said "diversity", I meant diversity in mathematical interests of > course. Not geographical diversity or color of the skin. > > There is no single person that understands all of the algorithms in Sage, > or would be qualified to implement them across disciplines. Instead, there > are many people taking on leadership roles in their respective field of > research. Sage is very much a collaborative effort where no single person / > university decides on where to go. > -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Friday, August 29, 2014 1:03:06 PM UTC+1, Bill Hart wrote: > > What sets Sage apart from GAP/Singular (and, I dare say: Flint) is the >> scale and the diversity of its contributors. >> > > No, what sets it apart is the number of contributors. Flint has had > contributors from all over the world. I would say from every continent > except Africa and Antarctica. > No, it is NOT just the number of contributors. Sage is nothing like Fint with 20x the number of programmers. In fact, all of your posts generally come from that assumption, but it couldn't be further from the truth. When I said "diversity", I meant diversity in mathematical interests of course. Not geographical diversity or color of the skin. There is no single person that understands all of the algorithms in Sage, or would be qualified to implement them across disciplines. Instead, there are many people taking on leadership roles in their respective field of research. Sage is very much a collaborative effort where no single person / university decides on where to go. -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
And eclib. Sorry, but there are lots of these! On Friday, 29 August 2014 16:52:04 UTC+2, Bill Hart wrote: > > Someone has just reminded me that mpfr and mpc are European projects. > > I mainly mentioned Singular, Gap and Pari because they aim to be CAS's of > sorts, not just libraries. > > It goes without saying that there are lots of opportunities for > collaboration here in Europe between groups that are already very friendly > with one another, including the libraries (flint, mpir, mpfr, mpc, etc, > etc). > > My perception is that there is a push for a combined European Group > Theory, Commutative/non-commutative Algebra, Number Theory project and all > that entails. It sounds a lot like Magma on steroids to me. :-) > > Bill. > -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
Someone has just reminded me that mpfr and mpc are European projects. I mainly mentioned Singular, Gap and Pari because they aim to be CAS's of sorts, not just libraries. It goes without saying that there are lots of opportunities for collaboration here in Europe between groups that are already very friendly with one another, including the libraries (flint, mpir, mpfr, mpc, etc, etc). My perception is that there is a push for a combined European Group Theory, Commutative/non-commutative Algebra, Number Theory project and all that entails. It sounds a lot like Magma on steroids to me. :-) Bill. -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Friday, 29 August 2014 15:12:05 UTC+2, Jakob Kroeker wrote: > > Bill Hart:: >> ... There is a lack of documentation on what algorithms are implemented, >> what their complexities are, or references. Some projects are not >> threadsafe. Testing is lacking and quite a bit of stuff just doesn't work >> and never did. And there is a general lack of credit given to individual >> developers in Europe by their own projects. Most importantly there is a >> culture of not giving appropriate academic credit to individuals who have >> made significant contributions to writing mathematical software. >> >> I don't see that Sage has contributed to fixing a single one of these >> hard problems. >> > > I'm not sure if Singular/GAP did solve that problems either or has not > more problems. Even if in general it is good to have alternatives (to > Sage), in my opinion Singular+Gap is not the right way to do. > I didn't know it had even had much of a chance to get going. I do know that it needs a lot more investment of time and money. > So I hope there will be a new CAS star at the sky which blasts the dated > Singular and GAP away. > I think that is the wrong approach. You are looking at it from a user's perspective, in that you'd like to have a nice Sage-like interface with all the functionality you require. But just writing a shiny new CAS doesn't give that to you. You still need the fast Groebner basis engine underneath, and the years of development that has gone into the multivariate arithmetic and to some extent the thousands of man-hours that have gone into libraries that use those things developed by mathematical researchers, who whilst working on those projects were the leading experts in their field. No amount of shiny CAS or even new funding, will give that to you all over again. Case in point. No less than 5 minutes ago, someone just showed me parallelised polynomial factorisation code that will be in Singular (hopefully) in the next release. It was developed as part of Singular's Factory. That represents years of investment by the DFG. That code, on a single core, was already faster than Magma. It is now much faster. Not a bad investment, I'd say! > > @referees: if you are reading this, just (let experts) evaluate the code > quality (readability, test coverage, correctness, maintainability, > extensibility,...) or the development process. You will not like the > outcome. Every couple of days I hit a bug in Singular and meanwhile I'm not > always officially file an issue in their bug tracking system because I was > asked to do so. > Unfortunately referees tend to not have time to examine large codebases in detail. They will however look at things such as past return on investment, the merits of the scientific/mathematical proposal, benefit to stakeholders, track record, how sound the proposal is from a technical perspective, their judgement of the likely outcomes,publication record, contribution to the progress of science. I'm pretty sure referees will acknowledge (even expect) that software systems contain bugs and that 20-30 year old systems will necessarily contain legacy code which hasn't yet been replaced or retired. So I think that even if referees did what you ask, and hired experts to evaluate the code, they'd find exactly what they expected to find (if competent). It would be very poor form to judge a scientific proposal on how perfect the code was, instead of on the scientific merits of the proposal and its importance and relevance to stakeholders. Singulars interpreter language has not even support of references (yes, on > a function call the data is (mostly) copied! ) and we are not talking about > data structures for trees or hash tables. > The Singular interpreter serves a completely different purpose than the Sage front-end. One of the things it has to keep doing for the foreseeable future is to support all the extant code written in the Singular language, for the original tasks Singular was designed to solve, and to support ongoing research work of the same kind (though the scope of the Singular project does seem to be growing lately). No new CAS can supply that demand. Nor should it! The current Singular interpreter may not provide you with all the modern language features, stability and performance you (or I) would like. But it it does provide important features, such as backwards compatibility with the huge legacy Singular codebase. To solve your problem you need new developers, paid with additional grant funding to work alongside the people maintaining the Singular interpreter, language, kernel and libraries, and definitely not for those people to stop what they are doing and work on something else! There's no point building a dog house if you don't feed the dog! If Singular were not maintained, all those thousands of man-hours of work would bitrot and become unavailable to the Open Source community, and it w
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
> > Bill Hart:: > ... There is a lack of documentation on what algorithms are implemented, > what their complexities are, or references. Some projects are not > threadsafe. Testing is lacking and quite a bit of stuff just doesn't work > and never did. And there is a general lack of credit given to individual > developers in Europe by their own projects. Most importantly there is a > culture of not giving appropriate academic credit to individuals who have > made significant contributions to writing mathematical software. > > I don't see that Sage has contributed to fixing a single one of these hard > problems. > I'm not sure if Singular/GAP did solve that problems either or has not more problems. Even if in general it is good to have alternatives (to Sage), in my opinion Singular+Gap is not the right way to do. So I hope there will be a new CAS star at the sky which blasts the dated Singular and GAP away. @referees: if you are reading this, just (let experts) evaluate the code quality (readability, test coverage, correctness, maintainability, extensibility,...) or the development process. You will not like the outcome. Every couple of days I hit a bug in Singular and meanwhile I'm not always officially file an issue in their bug tracking system because I was asked to do so. Singulars interpreter language has not even support of references (yes, on a function call the data is (mostly) copied! ) and we are not talking about data structures for trees or hash tables. Their groebner basis computation over intergers is buggy over years and nobody noticed or cared ( well, I do, and now Adi Popescu and Anne Fruehbis-Krueger are working on that issues ) Why is this important? Because otherwise you would be taking European money > and using it to fund a project which originated in the US [...] This is > crucial from the point of view of referees, in my opinion (again, please > bear in mind this is my own personal opinion, and doesn't necessarily > reflect the opinion of anyone else I have anything to do with). > Unfortunately in the eyes of the referees some of this arguments (EU vs US) could play a role, since what I'm heard from rumors was that one argument of the Singular+GAP proposal was to have an European alternative to the Sage project... Am Freitag, 29. August 2014 14:30:16 UTC+2 schrieb Bill Hart: > > One other important point when interpreting my interjection (which again I > stress is my own personal opinion), is that when mounting a campaign for a > large grant, here in Europe or elsewhere, one must very clearly communicate > what *need* is being addressed. If there isn't a clear need, you won't get > money. > > If your project is perfect, and you go around telling everyone that it is, > you will never be successful in getting the funding you desperately need. > The reality here in Europe is that mathematical research projects of a > computational nature struggle for their very existence. They are often run > out of a single lab with one or two main developers and a few postdocs and > PhD's if they are lucky. > > Some European mathematical software projects may not even be around > tomorrow if they don't get appropriate funding. Not because they aren't > worthy, or didn't have sufficient novelty, research value or smart people > working on them or because they weren't feasible, but because everyone just > assumed they would keep going on their own. They won't. > > These projects do not exist for the benefit of Sage. And in its current > state, no matter how noble or well-intentioned or international Sage is, > they can't! > > Sage does add value to those projects by widening the usership of those > projects, by contributing bug reports and build patches, by bringing them > publicity and in other ways. But one should never confuse this kind of > support with sustained funding. In the same way, those project are > benefiting Sage by being the best possible core components they can, given > the heavy constraints they have on manpower, time and budget. But the end > of those projects is not the enrichment of Sage, but the enrichment of > their direct beneficiaries, which from the perspective of a grant > application is the economy of the country who provided the grants, or the > scientific enrichment of the union. > > To that end, we must, in my opinion, be very careful when applying for > funds to "work on Sage". Who are the beneficiaries? How will they benefit? > What is the strategy to achieve that goal? Is it sustainable, practical? > What scientific merit does it have? How does it leverage the local > expertise? What is its novelty? How well is it engineered? > > That's another 2c I'm owed for my personal opinion. > > Bill. > > On Friday, 29 August 2014 14:03:06 UTC+2, Bill Hart wrote: >> >> >> >> On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: >>> >>> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism >>>
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
One other important point when interpreting my interjection (which again I stress is my own personal opinion), is that when mounting a campaign for a large grant, here in Europe or elsewhere, one must very clearly communicate what *need* is being addressed. If there isn't a clear need, you won't get money. If your project is perfect, and you go around telling everyone that it is, you will never be successful in getting the funding you desperately need. The reality here in Europe is that mathematical research projects of a computational nature struggle for their very existence. They are often run out of a single lab with one or two main developers and a few postdocs and PhD's if they are lucky. Some European mathematical software projects may not even be around tomorrow if they don't get appropriate funding. Not because they aren't worthy, or didn't have sufficient novelty, research value or smart people working on them or because they weren't feasible, but because everyone just assumed they would keep going on their own. They won't. These projects do not exist for the benefit of Sage. And in its current state, no matter how noble or well-intentioned or international Sage is, they can't! Sage does add value to those projects by widening the usership of those projects, by contributing bug reports and build patches, by bringing them publicity and in other ways. But one should never confuse this kind of support with sustained funding. In the same way, those project are benefiting Sage by being the best possible core components they can, given the heavy constraints they have on manpower, time and budget. But the end of those projects is not the enrichment of Sage, but the enrichment of their direct beneficiaries, which from the perspective of a grant application is the economy of the country who provided the grants, or the scientific enrichment of the union. To that end, we must, in my opinion, be very careful when applying for funds to "work on Sage". Who are the beneficiaries? How will they benefit? What is the strategy to achieve that goal? Is it sustainable, practical? What scientific merit does it have? How does it leverage the local expertise? What is its novelty? How well is it engineered? That's another 2c I'm owed for my personal opinion. Bill. On Friday, 29 August 2014 14:03:06 UTC+2, Bill Hart wrote: > > > > On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: >> >> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism >> rears its head. I thought the time where we only support German science >> were over... >> > > You have misunderstood. When applying for German funding, the rules will > naturally state that the project must benefit the people paying for the > work, namely German companies and Mutter und Vater taxpayer. > > When applying for European funding, the rules will naturally state that > the funding must benefit the people paying for the work, namely the > European Union members. > > The idea that European funds should be used primarily to support an > international project *with no direct benefit to European projects* invoked > in the grant is patently a non-starter. That's just as bad, in my opinion, > as taking public funds to work on a closed source mathematical system! > > >> >> What sets Sage apart from GAP/Singular (and, I dare say: Flint) is the >> scale and the diversity of its contributors. >> > > No, what sets it apart is the number of contributors. Flint has had > contributors from all over the world. I would say from every continent > except Africa and Antarctica. > > We are talking about how to mount a campaign for European funding, not > about nationalising Open Source projects. And we are talking about the > maintainers and core developers of projects, not their volunteer > contributors. > > The reality is Singular is run out of Kaiserslautern, Germany, Pari out of > Bordeaux, France and Gap out of St. Andrews UK. They all have volunteer > contributors all over the place. But these are not paid employees, or at > the least volunteers paid by another University (to primarily do teaching > or research)! > > Flint is too small to be owned by a given university. The two core > developers currently aren't even at the same institution. It has received > EPSRC (UK support), DFG (German support), Austrian support and had a > developer at Harvard for a time. Even its maintainer (me) has been > supported from grants in two separate European countries! Flint has also > had salaries/stipends paid for from Google Summer of Code and from MSRI. > > Saying that it is a US (or European) project is just completely wrong. >> >> > It was started by William Stein at the University of Washington. A large > portion of the funding that built that project up came from grants of > William Stein and other funding he obtained, including from the NSF. He is > also in the process of trying to build a company in col
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Friday, 29 August 2014 13:17:40 UTC+2, Volker Braun wrote: > > First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism rears > its head. I thought the time where we only support German science were > over... > You have misunderstood. When applying for German funding, the rules will naturally state that the project must benefit the people paying for the work, namely German companies and Mutter und Vater taxpayer. When applying for European funding, the rules will naturally state that the funding must benefit the people paying for the work, namely the European Union members. The idea that European funds should be used primarily to support an international project *with no direct benefit to European projects* invoked in the grant is patently a non-starter. That's just as bad, in my opinion, as taking public funds to work on a closed source mathematical system! > > What sets Sage apart from GAP/Singular (and, I dare say: Flint) is the > scale and the diversity of its contributors. > No, what sets it apart is the number of contributors. Flint has had contributors from all over the world. I would say from every continent except Africa and Antarctica. We are talking about how to mount a campaign for European funding, not about nationalising Open Source projects. And we are talking about the maintainers and core developers of projects, not their volunteer contributors. The reality is Singular is run out of Kaiserslautern, Germany, Pari out of Bordeaux, France and Gap out of St. Andrews UK. They all have volunteer contributors all over the place. But these are not paid employees, or at the least volunteers paid by another University (to primarily do teaching or research)! Flint is too small to be owned by a given university. The two core developers currently aren't even at the same institution. It has received EPSRC (UK support), DFG (German support), Austrian support and had a developer at Harvard for a time. Even its maintainer (me) has been supported from grants in two separate European countries! Flint has also had salaries/stipends paid for from Google Summer of Code and from MSRI. Saying that it is a US (or European) project is just completely wrong. > > It was started by William Stein at the University of Washington. A large portion of the funding that built that project up came from grants of William Stein and other funding he obtained, including from the NSF. He is also in the process of trying to build a company in collaboration with the University of Washington to make money to fund Sage development. The Sage Foundation is run through the University of Washington. If I donate to the project, the money is handled by the University of Washington. There is no way that you can justify the assertion that Sage is not primarily administered out of the US. And it has oodles of unpaid developers all over the world. > > On Friday, August 29, 2014 11:46:14 AM UTC+1, Bill Hart wrote: >> >> This is all to say nothing of the glaring problems, such as the lack of >> Windows 64 support >> > > Wait, did you just do a 180 and say that we should drop everything to > boost the market share of a failing north American software company? ;-) > No. I never suggested that contributions of code should be made to Microsoft. Bill. -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On 29 August 2014 12:43, William A Stein wrote: > > > On Friday, August 29, 2014, Volker Braun wrote: > >> First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism >> rears its head. I thought the time where we only support German science >> were over... >> >> What sets Sage apart from GAP/Singular (and, I dare say: Flint) is the >> scale and the diversity of its contributors. Saying that it is a US (or >> European) project is just completely wrong. >> > > Huge +1 > I'm sure that Bill was not actually promoting any nationalistic view, which surely we would all strongly disapprove of. But when applying for funding from the EU one has to answer silly questions about how the project would benefit the EU specifically. For this reason it is very important *not* to describe Sage as a US project, but an international one. John > > >> >> >> On Friday, August 29, 2014 11:46:14 AM UTC+1, Bill Hart wrote: >>> >>> This is all to say nothing of the glaring problems, such as the lack of >>> Windows 64 support >>> >> >> Wait, did you just do a 180 and say that we should drop everything to >> boost the market share of a failing north American software company? ;-) >> >> -- >> 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. > -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
First of all, it always saddens me when the ugly head of nationalism rears its head. I thought the time where we only support German science were over... What sets Sage apart from GAP/Singular (and, I dare say: Flint) is the scale and the diversity of its contributors. Saying that it is a US (or European) project is just completely wrong. On Friday, August 29, 2014 11:46:14 AM UTC+1, Bill Hart wrote: > > This is all to say nothing of the glaring problems, such as the lack of > Windows 64 support > Wait, did you just do a 180 and say that we should drop everything to boost the market share of a failing north American software company? ;-) -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
Nicolas, I wish you the best with a European grant based on Sage. Don't forget Singular! (Flint and MPIR are also European, but these might be too low level for your interests, I don't know.) The key to success with these European grants, I have been led to believe (by people who have gotten them and who have applied), is demonstrating that you have a strong network of interested individuals willing to participate in the project, and who will directly benefit from doing so. It's not the only key, but an important one. Now I will add my 2c worth. And bear in mind this is coming from someone who doesn't contribute to Sage directly, and who only recently began doing computer algebra proper. One of the biggest things European software projects like Pari, Gap, Singular need is contributions. I congratulate Peter Bruin on announcing that he is writing a power series module for Sage based on Pari instead of on polynomials. However, in a project like that, I hope that when some functionality (mathematical or otherwise) is perceived to be missing from Pari, that it will be contributed *to the Pari project directly*. And I don't mean as a set of Sage build patches or bug reports. I mean as a set of Pari contributions, to their code base, in their coding style, instead of writing more code in Sage directly! Why is this important? Because otherwise you would be taking European money and using it to fund a project which originated in the US (I think it fair to call it a US project). It does not enrich European software to be developing Sage. This is crucial from the point of view of referees, in my opinion (again, please bear in mind this is my own personal opinion, and doesn't necessarily reflect the opinion of anyone else I have anything to do with). Another thing to consider in such a proposal is building bridges between such projects. At present, some of the projects I've mentioned would desperately like to be in a wider Europe-wide collaboration (that is my understanding, anyway). But a bridge needs to be built between the projects, both technologically and cooperatively, in order to achieve this. Both desperately need funding and competent engineers to do the work! I don't personally see Sage as an ideal vehicle for this because its needs are strongly biased towards other things. But I wish you all the best with such an endeavour. By the way, I don't think Sage is a bandwagon in Europe any longer. It has pockets of strong support, especially in education in France. The fact that it is Free certainly appeals to the European sense of human rights, open access, fairness, liberty, respect for all persons, etc. But these points only help push a proposal over the line. They don't constitute the core thrust of such a proposal. Please talk to people running projects locally here in Europe, because you apparently aren't the only one with the same idea at this time. And please try to view this from the perspective of developers working in those projects. They have no interest whatsoever in contracts expire for working on their respective projects and being rehired to work on Sage itself. Any such proposal should be geared towards benefiting those European software projects directly and improving the (dire) state of affairs here in Europe. Sage has some great things going for it. It provides an interface to numerous Open Source projects that otherwise don't and can't talk to each other (I mean technologically). As a glue, Sage is awesome. Sage is also great in that it maintains interfaces to numerous projects with the *same* functionality. This makes it possible to compare results from different projects, or to get results from a different project if your preferred system has a problem. Or naturally, if the computation you want is too slow in one system, you can ask another system. But Sage alone doesn't solve the bridge problem. The component projects are still no more connected than they were before. A Singular user can no more talk to Gap or Pari than they could before. The only beneficiaries are Sage users. Furthermore, Sage is a cobbled inconsistent mess, precisely because of all the differing conventions in these projects. Assumptions in one system may not be the same in another, and input/output will be presented in differing ways. Exceptions are handled inconsistently. And most importantly, there may not even be mathematical consistency. Remember, Europeans absolutely love coming up with standards! (Not that they are very good at it. :-() This is all to say nothing of the glaring problems, such as the lack of Windows 64 support in such systems or indeed Sage. There are difficulties in finding which files are involved in implementing a given algorithm (the easiest way I know in Sage is to run the algorithms in a loop and press CTRL-C to get a stack trace!!). There is a lack of documentation on what algorithms are implemented, what their compl
Re: [sage-devel] Re: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
I really agree with your comments. And in terms of "niche", I would add that Sage is actually becoming one for combinatorics. I don't say that everyone in combinatorics is using Sage but I know lots of people (including me) for whom it would be quite complicated to move to another language. And we do have lots of high skilled researcher that develop their newest algorithms into sage and not in the MMMs. I also agree with externalization and larger communities. That is one of the reasons I was promoting PyCon here and why I'm organizing these PyCon Sage days. I think we have a lot to learn and gain from other python developers and projects. > For information: we will have a preparatory meeting for this grant > application on September 8-9th in Orsay. Feel free to join. > Noted ;) Cheers, Viviane > > Cheers, > Nicolas > > [1] http://sagebook.gforge.inria.fr/ > > PS for William: please be super careful with wording. Referees of > grant applications will look around to access the value of Sage and > its chances of success. > > > -- > Nicolas M. Thiéry "Isil" > 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. > -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
Hi! For whatever two cents it's worth, here is my modest analysis of the situation and how I'll try to contribute to tackle this. I am using the same metric as William: is Sage becoming a viable alternative to XXX. However, by this, I don't mean that it should completely take over the niche and bring its competitor to bankruptcy. Nor even that it should take over a large proportion of the niche. Just that Sage shall be good enough for most users in the niche to have the real choice to use it. Or to use something else. To this respect, I think Sage is doing quite well. For example, many universities in France are progressively switching to Sage, both for research and education. Better, our national competition that recruits math teachers for high schools -- whose training include some non trivial computer algebra -- have recently ruled out non open source software for its oral exams, when they used to be mostly Maple/Mathematica/Matlab based. Maybe our book [1] contributed a tiny bit to this. At least, it's by writing it that we convinced ourselves that Sage was already a non perfect but viable alternative for education. Maybe this difference of appreciation with William just stems from different expectations. I can understand William's frustration that things are not going as fast as he would have dreamed it to be. Yet, nine years ago, when I read the Sage mission statement, I thought it was extraordinary bold. In fact, from past experience, I was originally giving peanuts to Sage's success, and I thought that William had no idea of the difficulty of the endeavor. Well, ever since then, I have been super glad to have been proven wrong :-) And even though I am often frustrated that things are going slow, I am neither surprised nor disappointed. Altogether, the development model, developed by users for users, is mostly doing the job. However there are some areas that have been mentioned here (packaging&distribution, documentation, notebook, graphics, ...) that are lagging behind because it's too technical to do be taken care of as a side product of the daily job of users. To get around this, I believe we need to externalize as much as we can to larger communities (e.g. transition quickly from the Sage notebook to the IPython notebook, use pip, ...) *and* find funding for a few full-time developers. William believes in SMC to drive in such funding. I am not necessarily convinced by some aspects of the strategy, but I am glad he is exploring this potential opportunity. The situation is complicated, and we don't know for sure what's the right approach; probably there are several complementary ones. Anyone with a vision should just try hard and follow his beliefs. On my side, I am going to coordinate a European grant application (submission: January 2015) around the Sage ecosystem (including GAP, Pari, ...), with main goal to fund a couple full time devs over the next few years: https://github.com/sagemath/grant-europe I have honestly no idea of the odds of success. Probably low, although we do fit quite well within the call; riding the open wave is fashionable these days. So let's just be bold. The other challenge will be to find good candidates for such developer positions. If you'd be interested in participating, please get in touch and join. If you'd be potentially interested in becoming a full time Sage dev in Europe (or associated country) for a couple years, please contact me as well. For information: we will have a preparatory meeting for this grant application on September 8-9th in Orsay. Feel free to join. Cheers, Nicolas [1] http://sagebook.gforge.inria.fr/ PS for William: please be super careful with wording. Referees of grant applications will look around to access the value of Sage and its chances of success. -- Nicolas M. Thiéry "Isil" 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 05:27:21AM -0700, kcrisman wrote: > And the research algebra community is really not THAT big - > certainly not of the people who are qualified, have time to work > on code, and desire to. The combinatorics community is not that big either. And there are strong libraries in Maple and Mathematica that are hard to beat (similar to what happens with Magma for algebra). Yet, with an initial seed of a few dedicated people, one can go a long way over the years, progressively training people in one's community, and giving them the time and desire to contribute back. Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry "Isil" 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
The commenters outside sage-* are all blind. The mathematicians, if they can program, know nothing about Open Source and highly distributed development. The developers know nothing about what drives the choices in Sage. Students and enthusiasts grapple with both algebra and Python in Sage. And posters here think noone works specifically on what's missing in Sage! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant -- 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: [sage-release] You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you? (a comment about it)
Hi everyone, I have been following part of this conversation and I think there is one aspect here that most of you are missing. Sage does not chose... Sage is not a mess on purpose, but it is developed by a big number of people and people develop what they need. So if all developers are researchers, then mostly research aspects are going to be developed, not interface and basic usage. I think most sage users agree that the interface could be made better but as nerd-mathematicians, we are not the ones qualified to do it (and we don't want to cause we don't have the time). There are two ways of solving this problem: more funding and more diverse users, which both imply a better interface so it looks like an infinite loop. The efforts that William Stein put into SageMathCloud are going into the right direction to leave the loop. He said so himself, he decided to put lots of effort into non-mathematical aspects that, I suppose, do not interest him that much, because he wants to reach more users. Doing so, we can reach non-researcher users, like teachers, who might want to contribute into a better documentation / interface. And of course, if SageMathCloud becomes a viable funding source, then some developers could be hired which would help. Choosing what aspect you want to improve only comes with funding. Otherwise, you can just take whatever people develop... 2014-08-27 17:09 GMT+02:00 kcrisman : > Interesting comment on the post on Facebook. Note the comment about > payment as well. > +++ > In my university, we have been using a sagenb server for three years. We > use it in Calculus/Algebra courses for mathematicians, electrical > ingenieers, agricultural ingenieers, etc. We really use a few basic > commands. If Sage has the 1% functionality or less than Magma, Mathematica, > etc, is not a problem for us. Our main problem is that the manual and > documentation are a mess, lacking of enough examples (please, why not do > something like Mathematica?). Anothe problem is the interface, for > instance, you can not select several cells and make copy/paste (I know this > is posible with sagemathcloud). Or for instance, it is difficult to avoid > that pupils share worksheets in a final individual test. With respect to > functionality we have problems with basic graphics (some of them fixed > today, to be fair). Still having problems solving basic inequalities. > Come on guys, SAGE has A LOT of possibilities that make it for > universities a better choice than Mathematica, Maple, etc. But you should > take care of interface, manuals and help and basic functionalities. I'm > sure that many universities would pay if flexible possibilities of payment > are allowed. > In my opinión SAGE has to choose: > 1. Focus on development of more and new specialiced functionalities. In > this case, its users will be a small group of researchers that don't care > how rough or how time consuming is to make a few instructions to work > properly. Besides, it will be difficult to obtain financing, thus you can > compete only in a Little specialized part (magma, mathematica, maple, GAP > all together is too ambicious). > 2. Focus on basic functionalities on calculus and basic algebra for > teaching. They need to be improved (the power of Maxima is poor in > inequalities, integrals, numeric series... it is not enough at all). They > need also to be user friendly and easy to learn. In this case maybe you can > obtain money from universities and with that money, maybe you can work on > quaternion algebras. > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
