I was one of the first users of Mathematica and recently received a thank-you note from Wolfram Research for my early support. Unlike many early supporters and

I was one of the first users of Mathematica and recently received a thank-you note from Wolfram Research for my early support. Unlike many early supporters and enthusiasts of Mathematica, however, I won't be encouraging others to join the Mathematica bandwagon. I myself stopped using the software about a decade ago for one simple, painful reason: I don't want my work to be trapped inside of a system that prevents others from freely building upon it. (And, no, Wolfram's CDF and "player" software are not substitutes for real, live code that I can give to others and have them use, change, and build upon -- without having to license a proprietary software system.) As I've written before, Mathematica is one of the world's great works of software, mathematics, and engineering. But, as I've also written before, it can't achieve but the smallest portion of its potential to do good for humankind until all humans can use it. For real. If Google wanted to do the world a big favor, gain itself some serious PR points, and perhaps increase its supply of potential math-savvy engineers two decades hence, it ought to buy Wolfram Research, continue to fund WR's work, and release Mathematica as free software backed by an open development process. Maybe this feat is too big for Google to pull off. Maybe it would take a consortium -- Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and IBM together -- but maybe it could happen. And, if it did, that would be a great day for humankind.