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While I will probably never use mathematica, due to its breathtaking price, one can only wonder how many researchers the world over simply pirate it. I also do
by delackner 18y ago
While I will probably never use mathematica, due to its breathtaking price, one can only wonder how many researchers the world over simply pirate it. I also doubt we will ever see Wolfram willing to set the price at a level that normal human beings can afford.
Perhaps a client-server version that does all its computing back at Wolfram's servers, would give them the confidence to dabble with a sane price point...
- newt0311 18y agoresearchers work in universities, almost all of which have site-wide licenses. Site-wide licenses for mathematica also start to approach reason. Its doubtful that that many researchers will have to pirate it.
- delackner 18y agoUniversities in a lot of countries do not have budgets that can deal with even $1000 a seat.
- dzorz 18y agoI can confirm this. We have a site-wide license for Matlab, but not for Mathematica. Educational version of Mathematica 7 would cost me my two monthly salaries - therefore I will pirate it.
- listic 18y agoI didn't buy any, but from my point of view, Mathematica is priced just a bit lower than Matlab. Matlab quotes me $1900 for a single common license: http://www.mathworks.com/store/loginSubmitGuest.do http://www.mathworks.com/store/loginSubmitGuest.do while Mathematica is $1750: http://store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathematica/ http://store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathematica/ How much does site license for Matlab cost you?
- PStamatiou 18y agoI got Matlab student version 4 years ago for around $140.
- maximilian 18y agoA site license is a lot. My dept can't afford it and use Maple instead.
- pg 18y agoresearchers work in universities Really? By definition? Was Erdos not a "researcher?"
- gaius 18y agoIt's not a matter of "dabbling" or "sanity", it's a matter of making a niche product that takes a lot of very qualified people years of work. The market for individual consumers that would buy Mathematica is tiny. You might as well wonder why SAP don't "dabble" with a "sane" price point for R/3 for home users to balance their chequebooks.
- wheels 18y agoI'm not completely convinced. I'd love to use Mathematica for modeling some of the stuff that we're doing, but no way I'm going to drop $4000 on it (the price where I live). $500 and I'd do it immediately.
- JulianMorrison 18y ago"Shockingly rich professors of mathematics" - a harshly vertical niche, no wonder the per-unit price is high. But I think they've painted themselves into a bit of an unnecessary corner. Mathematica is a universal workhorse and math has huge applicability. I think they could cut the per-unit price and make it up on volume, selling into commerce and academia. Heck, I'd be inclined to offer "open source user" licenses free for private individuals who agreed to CC license their results and their code libraries. Who makes more money, Toyota or Rolls Royce?
- delackner 18y ago"Who makes more money, Toyota or Rolls Royce?" I'd leave off the automotive comparison. Porsche is rich enough to contemplate buying Volkswagen.
- gaius 18y agoI expect, like Oracle, almost all users of Mathematica are on their institution or employer's site licence. There's plenty of cheap maths software (e.g. MathCad) and free (e.g. Sage, Octave) around.