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Society already funds a lot of scientific research. Some of that funding currently goes to private pockets like Wolfram Research, who license out their propriet
by oefrha 8mo ago
Society already funds a lot of scientific research. Some of that funding currently goes to private pockets like Wolfram Research, who license out their proprietary tech under expensive and highly limiting licenses (they're licensed per CPU core, Oracle style), so that scientists can do scientific computing.
As a former Mathematica user, a good part of the core functionality is great and ahead of open source, the rest and especially a lot of me-too functionality added over the years is mediocre at best and beaten by open source, while the ecosystem around it is basically nonexistent thanks to the closed nature, so anything not blessed by Wolfram Research is painful. In open source, say Python, people constantly try to outdo each other in performance, DX, etc.; and whatever you need there's likely one or more libraries for it, which you can inspect to decide for yourself or even extend yourself. With Wolfram, you get what you get in the form of binary blobs.
I would love to see institutions pooling resources to advance open source scientific computing, so that it finally crosses the threshold of open and better (from the current open and sometimes better).
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- kgwgk 8mo ago> Some of that funding currently goes to private pockets Most (all?) of that funding goes to private pockets: researchers work for money, equipment costs money, etc.
- oefrha 8mo agoIt’s hard to distribute equipment, food and shelter at zero marginal cost. It’s easy to distribute software at zero marginal cost. So let’s start there.
- auggierose 8mo agoNo one is stopping you. Build it, then distribute it. You will find that as long as people need to pay for their living, there is no post-scarcity world in any domain, especially not the digital one.
- oefrha 8mo agoI have built and distributed “it” more than at least 95% of developers out there, thanks for asking. And that’s without institutional grants.
- auggierose 8mo agoAnd without a salary?
- oefrha 8mo agoAcademic institutions already pay salaries whether they fund open source development or Wolfram Research, so not sure what you’re trying to argue. People haven’t been starving while doing research in the open.
- auggierose 8mo agoBut academic institutions didn’t produce Mathematica. The point is simple: a lot of useful software like Mathematica has not been open-source for a reason. It is not about distribution being free; it is about production being expensive.
- oefrha 8mo agoSome form of Mathematica has been open for a long time, in the form of Sage etc. There's no reason why academic institutions can't pool more money to develop these further.
- auggierose 8mo agoSage is a nice effort, but it isn't Mathematica. I use Mathematica, I don't use Sage. Academic institutions had almost 40 years to "pool more money", yet there is nothing that rivals Mathematica. The reason is simple: open-source doesn't pay well enough.
- PeterStuer 8mo agoAcademic institutions have internal IP scouting monitoring every lab for monetizable research. On top of that, and often competing with the former, professors are constantly exploring (heavily subsidized with public grants and staffed with free grad students) spin-offs to funnel any commercial potential of their research into their own or their buddie's pockets. It's just like in politics with revolving doors and plushy 'speaking engagements' or 'board seats' galore.
- Karrot_Kream 8mo agoIsn't plugging Wolfram algorithms into LLMs basically their current solution for the DX problem? As far as society funding research, while I'm quite sympathetic to this view, Wolfram also puts in a significant amount of private dollars into the operationalization of their systems. My guess is there's a whole range of algorithms that aren't prominent enough to publish a paper on nor economically lucrative enough to build a company on that Wolfram products sell. That said I do think LLM coding agents offer a great way forward to implement more papers on a FOSS manner.