4 ms·

what is the alternative? using some open source project that has no clear steward and nearly zero incentive (financial or otherwise) for tracking down esoteric

what is the alternative? using some open source project that has no clear steward and nearly zero incentive (financial or otherwise) for tracking down esoteric bugs? mathematica is built by a company that seems to take a lot of pride in quality. they are also clearly incentivized by keeping the company afloat and thus by addressing major issues. i hear people barking incessantly about open source software in mathematics and science, but i just don't see what would actually be successful. in most people's daily jobs in engineering and even in large science projects, proprietary code is used everywhere. it's the only way to get things done in many cases. in my experience, getting a bug acknowledged, prioritized, and then fixed in open source software is like pulling teeth. what are you going to do with open source mathematics or scientific software where only like a person or two understand the bug? your story could easily have replaced mathematica with sage, and the story wouldn't be changed at all. okay fine, sage is open source. but what's more likely to be successful: (1) you are going to look through the likely millions of lines of code that makes up sage and find what's happening, or (2) you call up wolfram and ask what's going on since you have support for a product that you paid for? how is open source software supposedly inherently better for math and science research?

murukesh_s 7y ago
Why can't companies provide paid support for open source software? I believe lot of open source products work on that model, including Linux. The bad thing with proprietary software is not many students and researchers from developing countries cannot afford it as the pricing is always based on developed economies scale. But if it's open source, every one can use it and more affluent researchers can get the paid support so they don't need to hunt through thousands of lines of code or fix bug themselves.
reikonomusha 7y ago
Open source software first and foremost means reproducibility. With open software, anybody on earth with the right equipment can easily and trivially reproduce a result at no additional cost or hindering contractual terms. Reproducibility is paramount, and sits at the very core of science. Results that cannot be reconstructed hardly count as new knowledge. (As a funny story, even Wolfram-the-company can’t run SMP, the predecessor of Mathematica. Why? They can’t decrypt it or unlock it, and can’t figure out how to work around it.) Every major tech company on earth uses open source software at the heart of their business. So we know something sustainable is possible. Open source, one-size-fits-all math software is a tough nut to crack. I think most people could get most of their algebra and calculus done with existing open packages like wxMaxima or Sage. Specialized computations, such as those in group theory, already have open source implementations that exceed any closed competitor. As for the construction of a competing CAS, some organization would have to employ a team. That costs money, and so far no company (that I know!) sees it as either a worthwhile investment or charitable cause. If folks do know of a company, I’d love to know.
- nikofeyn 7y ago
  > Open source software first and foremost means reproducibility. With open software, anybody on earth with the right equipment can easily and trivially reproduce a result at no additional cost or hindering contractual terms. why? why is proprietary software less reproducible? aside from cost, i might even argue that proprietary software is more reproducible. open source software often has dependency hell. how are you sure that the dependencies and software installation is the same between two computers? how are results not able to be reconstructed with proprietary software, aside from cost (which is not your argument)? if someone has a result found in mathematica, then couldn't that same method be reconstructed in other software to compare results? if it can't, then mathematica provides some feature not found in other software. and plenty of science operates by not being fully reproducible by independent parties due to cost and available equipment. that's often mitigated by people reproducing the experiments or results with different equipment and even methods. and even then, every regular joe still can't reproduce the results due to massive costs.
  - reikonomusha 7y ago
    > why is proprietary software less reproducible? Proprietary software is less reproducible because the software artifacts literally cannot be reproduced in different environments. That's why I mentioned SMP as an example; even the vendors of the software can't reproduce their own artifact. Moreover, vendors rarely provide access to previously released versions, because "newer is always better". And nobody, except the vendor, is allowed to host or publish old/different versions. The availability of the source code does not also somehow prohibit binaries from being published. > how are results not able to be reconstructed with proprietary software [...]? Cost, legal viability, availability, shareability, etc. Cost is just one aspect. I also can't provide my copy of Mathematica along with my code that produces my results to you; I'm contractually obliged to not copy the software, and so even if I wanted to allow you to reproduce my results, I have no power to do so. > and plenty of science operates by not being fully reproducible [...] This doesn't mean we should be driving away from reproducibility just because it's lacking in some areas of science.
    - 7y ago
7thaccount 7y ago
Your points are valid, but there are other considerations. With open source software I can find and fix a bug in a routine and submit a patch for other people. With closed-source software, there is no guarantee that a bug I find will be prioritized and fixed if I submit it even if the company values quality (they likely have more open issues than people to fix). Now granted, I'm personally probably not going to track down some obscure bug, but others may.

murukesh_s 7y ago

Why can't companies provide paid support for open source software? I believe lot of open source products work on that model, including Linux. The bad thing with proprietary software is not many students and researchers from developing countries cannot afford it as the pricing is always based on developed economies scale. But if it's open source, every one can use it and more affluent researchers can get the paid support so they don't need to hunt through thousands of lines of code or fix bug themselves.

reikonomusha 7y ago

Open source software first and foremost means reproducibility. With open software, anybody on earth with the right equipment can easily and trivially reproduce a result at no additional cost or hindering contractual terms. Reproducibility is paramount, and sits at the very core of science. Results that cannot be reconstructed hardly count as new knowledge. (As a funny story, even Wolfram-the-company can’t run SMP, the predecessor of Mathematica. Why? They can’t decrypt it or unlock it, and can’t figure out how to work around it.) Every major tech company on earth uses open source software at the heart of their business. So we know something sustainable is possible. Open source, one-size-fits-all math software is a tough nut to crack. I think most people could get most of their algebra and calculus done with existing open packages like wxMaxima or Sage. Specialized computations, such as those in group theory, already have open source implementations that exceed any closed competitor. As for the construction of a competing CAS, some organization would have to employ a team. That costs money, and so far no company (that I know!) sees it as either a worthwhile investment or charitable cause. If folks do know of a company, I’d love to know.

nikofeyn 7y ago
> Open source software first and foremost means reproducibility. With open software, anybody on earth with the right equipment can easily and trivially reproduce a result at no additional cost or hindering contractual terms. why? why is proprietary software less reproducible? aside from cost, i might even argue that proprietary software is more reproducible. open source software often has dependency hell. how are you sure that the dependencies and software installation is the same between two computers? how are results not able to be reconstructed with proprietary software, aside from cost (which is not your argument)? if someone has a result found in mathematica, then couldn't that same method be reconstructed in other software to compare results? if it can't, then mathematica provides some feature not found in other software. and plenty of science operates by not being fully reproducible by independent parties due to cost and available equipment. that's often mitigated by people reproducing the experiments or results with different equipment and even methods. and even then, every regular joe still can't reproduce the results due to massive costs.
- reikonomusha 7y ago
  > why is proprietary software less reproducible? Proprietary software is less reproducible because the software artifacts literally cannot be reproduced in different environments. That's why I mentioned SMP as an example; even the vendors of the software can't reproduce their own artifact. Moreover, vendors rarely provide access to previously released versions, because "newer is always better". And nobody, except the vendor, is allowed to host or publish old/different versions. The availability of the source code does not also somehow prohibit binaries from being published. > how are results not able to be reconstructed with proprietary software [...]? Cost, legal viability, availability, shareability, etc. Cost is just one aspect. I also can't provide my copy of Mathematica along with my code that produces my results to you; I'm contractually obliged to not copy the software, and so even if I wanted to allow you to reproduce my results, I have no power to do so. > and plenty of science operates by not being fully reproducible [...] This doesn't mean we should be driving away from reproducibility just because it's lacking in some areas of science.
  - 7y ago

7thaccount 7y ago

Your points are valid, but there are other considerations. With open source software I can find and fix a bug in a routine and submit a patch for other people. With closed-source software, there is no guarantee that a bug I find will be prioritized and fixed if I submit it even if the company values quality (they likely have more open issues than people to fix). Now granted, I'm personally probably not going to track down some obscure bug, but others may.