13 ms·

"Try it for free"... nope. Languages should be free, period, not free for trial.

by natch 12y ago

swalsh 12y ago
"Languages should be free, period, not free for trial." Why?
- natch 12y ago
  See my answer to tedsanders.
tedsanders 12y ago
Could you explain why you believe this and why it applies to languages but not other tools? I don't have a strong opinion either way, but to me it seems fair that people should be compensated for the innovative work they do.
- natch 12y ago
  I've done, and many of us do, tons of very valuable innovative work that we're not financially compensated for. There are other kinds of compensation, of course, and sometimes indirect financial benefits. I just don't think the language will thrive as well as it could if the number of users is limited by a financial barrier. Sure, it will have users, and sure, they will find it useful, but a lot of its potential will go unrealized. You could make the same argument with tools, so why are languages different? I think because they are more foundational.. other tools are built IN them not just using them. They become a substrate. Or not, if they're not widely used.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - carlob 12y ago
    > You could make the same argument with tools, so why are languages different? I think because they are more foundational.. other tools are built IN them not just using them. They become a substrate. Or not, if they're not widely used. What about the computer itself. I don't want to argue one way or the other but the hierarchy: Hardware (non-free) OS (sometimes-free) Programming language (mostly-free) Programs (sometimes-free) seems pretty arbitrary.
    - natch 12y ago
      Hardware is molecules, not bits.
      - sejje 12y ago
        What's the difference, in terms of this discussion? They both have a cost.
        mightybyte 12y ago
        The difference is that bits can be copied as well as transported for almost zero cost. The same is not true of molecules.
        taliesinb 12y ago
        But your argument implies that all video and audio and text content should be free. But it's not -- we pay content creators to create it, and if we didn't, a lot of that content wouldn't get created.
        mightybyte 12y ago
        Who said our current state of affairs is optimal?
        avn2109 12y ago
        And to play the devil's advocate here: The supply of all video and audio and text content is ~infinite because of torrents, so the laws of supply and demand dictate that its price fall to ~0 for any finite demand. As an example, if tomorrow I invented a machine that made unlimited free copies of soybeans and distributed those copies for ~$0 to any internet connected location on earth, the market value of soybeans would very quickly approach zero. Whether or not my machine is illegal would be quite immaterial to the laws of economics, which would continue to propagate information about supply and demand through prices so long as my machine was working. Of course, the same is true of corn and also intangible goods like massages [0]. By induction you might claim that the story for mp3's is the same. [0] If you find a machine that gives unlimited massages at a distance, let me know immediately
  - jasonpeacock 12y ago
    This is a platform, not just a language. The same way that 'Mathematica' also has/is a language, but also a platform. You can write whatever code you want, but you can only run it on their hosted platform which is not free to operate.
  - bmm6o 12y ago
    > I've done, and many of us do, tons of very valuable innovative work that we're not financially compensated for. Arrangements in which you or others have previously engaged are not relevant, at least without an argument. > I just don't think the language will thrive as well as it could if the number of users is limited by a financial barrier. If this is actually your argument you should have lead with it. But it's not like Wolfram is new to the PL business, Mathematica has been pay since it was distributed on floppies and it has a large community. Making it free might make a stronger, larger community, but if you want to convince Wolfram to do that you'll need to propose a way to make up the lost revenue.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  Ignoring all of the politics of "Free Software" and/or "Open Source Software", as a practical matter languages that are not available in no-cost implementations are rarely successful outside of very niche markets. Though, arguably, the type of stuff Mathematica is used for is already sufficiently niche that this is less of a concern.
  - palr 12y ago
    To be pedantic, Free/Open Source Software has nothing to do with the cost.
taliesinb 12y ago
The Rasperberry PI contains a "free, period" release of the language: http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/ http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/ But no, the language is not open source, and that is unlikely to change in the future.
superfx 12y ago
Except that they're not just providing a language, but a back-end for cloud computing.
- natch 12y ago
  I would be happy to do the computing on my own servers.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    OK, use something else then.
  - bertil 12y ago
    Servers include semantic update: I doubt you have the capacity to do that with the same commitment, or that Wolfram Language would make much sense without it.
  - SoftwareMaven 12y ago
    And should they give you the tera- or petabytes of data sets that constitute the actual value proposition of the Wolfram language? The data sets they keep current so when you ask for the flag of the largest country that says "good afternoon", you know you are getting the current largest country. It seems to me that other people shouldn't demand the results of somebody else's efforts be released in any way other than the creator desires. Feel free to gather the data yourself, build a platform of your own, and then give it away, but the arrogance of expecting somebody else to do that for you is nothing short of shocking to me.
vph 12y ago
Not to defend Wolfram, but to understand this you'll have to understand that "The Wolfram Language" is not like the traditional "programming languages". Traditional programming languages consist of a set of grammar, essential built-in libraries and a few development tools. The Wolfram Language is more than that. It includes the Mathematica language, a very rich set of libraries/algorithms, rich bodies of knowledge encoded in curated datasets in various kinds of physical and social sciences. It might be best to compare the Wolfram Language to natural languages like English instead of programming language. The English language is not just a set of grammar, but also a rich collection of vocabularies that need to be compiled and maintained, and perhaps a rich collection of literature that need to be maintained and expanded to help learners understand the language. Wolfram spent quite some time and resources to collect data for his Wolfram Alpha, and his new "language". It makes sense to charge money for such efforts.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  They also spend time and money keeping that dataset up-to-date.
- comex 12y ago
  It's not like every other popular language doesn't include huge rich sets of free libraries and algorithms - Mathematica has few good competitors (not none) in many math and science areas, but competitors are obviously much richer in most of the rest (which is important for a general purpose programming language). It's just that those libraries are usually spread among many open source libraries written by different people rather than being all centralized. Based on an accounting of the work involved, it's reasonable to charge, but based on the options available (and the relative unprovenness of the Wolfram Language), it's also perfectly reasonable for people like the parent to insist on free languages only. It's what Wolfram's competing with, at least in the view of the world where it's not singlehandedly "redefin[ing] the process of programming"...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Not to defend Wolfram, but to understand this you'll have to understand that "The Wolfram Language" is not like the traditional "programming languages". Of course not, its a New Kind of Programming Language.
fillybuster 12y ago
It looks like it is not a free trial but free with use limits. IE You can use it for free forever, but just not too much each month. Pay for more CPU time after you hit your limit or wait until next month to get more free time.
- _delirium 12y ago
  It looks like there's also a 30-day limit on "deployments" in the free tier. It's not 100% clear to me what that means, but I'd guess it means public-facing apps built on top of the API need a paid account to deploy more than as temporary/test setups.

"Try it for free"... nope. Languages should be free, period, not free for trial.

by natch 12y ago

"Try it for free"... nope. Languages should be free, period, not free for trial.

swalsh 12y ago

"Languages should be free, period, not free for trial." Why?

natch 12y ago
See my answer to tedsanders.

tedsanders 12y ago

Could you explain why you believe this and why it applies to languages but not other tools? I don't have a strong opinion either way, but to me it seems fair that people should be compensated for the innovative work they do.

natch 12y ago
I've done, and many of us do, tons of very valuable innovative work that we're not financially compensated for. There are other kinds of compensation, of course, and sometimes indirect financial benefits. I just don't think the language will thrive as well as it could if the number of users is limited by a financial barrier. Sure, it will have users, and sure, they will find it useful, but a lot of its potential will go unrealized. You could make the same argument with tools, so why are languages different? I think because they are more foundational.. other tools are built IN them not just using them. They become a substrate. Or not, if they're not widely used.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- carlob 12y ago
  > You could make the same argument with tools, so why are languages different? I think because they are more foundational.. other tools are built IN them not just using them. They become a substrate. Or not, if they're not widely used. What about the computer itself. I don't want to argue one way or the other but the hierarchy: Hardware (non-free) OS (sometimes-free) Programming language (mostly-free) Programs (sometimes-free) seems pretty arbitrary.
  - natch 12y ago
    Hardware is molecules, not bits.
    - sejje 12y ago
      What's the difference, in terms of this discussion? They both have a cost.
      - mightybyte 12y ago
        The difference is that bits can be copied as well as transported for almost zero cost. The same is not true of molecules.
        taliesinb 12y ago
        But your argument implies that all video and audio and text content should be free. But it's not -- we pay content creators to create it, and if we didn't, a lot of that content wouldn't get created.
        mightybyte 12y ago
        Who said our current state of affairs is optimal?
        avn2109 12y ago
        And to play the devil's advocate here: The supply of all video and audio and text content is ~infinite because of torrents, so the laws of supply and demand dictate that its price fall to ~0 for any finite demand. As an example, if tomorrow I invented a machine that made unlimited free copies of soybeans and distributed those copies for ~$0 to any internet connected location on earth, the market value of soybeans would very quickly approach zero. Whether or not my machine is illegal would be quite immaterial to the laws of economics, which would continue to propagate information about supply and demand through prices so long as my machine was working. Of course, the same is true of corn and also intangible goods like massages [0]. By induction you might claim that the story for mp3's is the same. [0] If you find a machine that gives unlimited massages at a distance, let me know immediately
- jasonpeacock 12y ago
  This is a platform, not just a language. The same way that 'Mathematica' also has/is a language, but also a platform. You can write whatever code you want, but you can only run it on their hosted platform which is not free to operate.
- bmm6o 12y ago
  > I've done, and many of us do, tons of very valuable innovative work that we're not financially compensated for. Arrangements in which you or others have previously engaged are not relevant, at least without an argument. > I just don't think the language will thrive as well as it could if the number of users is limited by a financial barrier. If this is actually your argument you should have lead with it. But it's not like Wolfram is new to the PL business, Mathematica has been pay since it was distributed on floppies and it has a large community. Making it free might make a stronger, larger community, but if you want to convince Wolfram to do that you'll need to propose a way to make up the lost revenue.
georgemcbay 12y ago
Ignoring all of the politics of "Free Software" and/or "Open Source Software", as a practical matter languages that are not available in no-cost implementations are rarely successful outside of very niche markets. Though, arguably, the type of stuff Mathematica is used for is already sufficiently niche that this is less of a concern.
- palr 12y ago
  To be pedantic, Free/Open Source Software has nothing to do with the cost.

taliesinb 12y ago

The Rasperberry PI contains a "free, period" release of the language: http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/ http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/ But no, the language is not open source, and that is unlikely to change in the future.

superfx 12y ago

Except that they're not just providing a language, but a back-end for cloud computing.

natch 12y ago
I would be happy to do the computing on my own servers.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  OK, use something else then.
- bertil 12y ago
  Servers include semantic update: I doubt you have the capacity to do that with the same commitment, or that Wolfram Language would make much sense without it.
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  And should they give you the tera- or petabytes of data sets that constitute the actual value proposition of the Wolfram language? The data sets they keep current so when you ask for the flag of the largest country that says "good afternoon", you know you are getting the current largest country. It seems to me that other people shouldn't demand the results of somebody else's efforts be released in any way other than the creator desires. Feel free to gather the data yourself, build a platform of your own, and then give it away, but the arrogance of expecting somebody else to do that for you is nothing short of shocking to me.

vph 12y ago

Not to defend Wolfram, but to understand this you'll have to understand that "The Wolfram Language" is not like the traditional "programming languages". Traditional programming languages consist of a set of grammar, essential built-in libraries and a few development tools. The Wolfram Language is more than that. It includes the Mathematica language, a very rich set of libraries/algorithms, rich bodies of knowledge encoded in curated datasets in various kinds of physical and social sciences. It might be best to compare the Wolfram Language to natural languages like English instead of programming language. The English language is not just a set of grammar, but also a rich collection of vocabularies that need to be compiled and maintained, and perhaps a rich collection of literature that need to be maintained and expanded to help learners understand the language. Wolfram spent quite some time and resources to collect data for his Wolfram Alpha, and his new "language". It makes sense to charge money for such efforts.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
They also spend time and money keeping that dataset up-to-date.
comex 12y ago
It's not like every other popular language doesn't include huge rich sets of free libraries and algorithms - Mathematica has few good competitors (not none) in many math and science areas, but competitors are obviously much richer in most of the rest (which is important for a general purpose programming language). It's just that those libraries are usually spread among many open source libraries written by different people rather than being all centralized. Based on an accounting of the work involved, it's reasonable to charge, but based on the options available (and the relative unprovenness of the Wolfram Language), it's also perfectly reasonable for people like the parent to insist on free languages only. It's what Wolfram's competing with, at least in the view of the world where it's not singlehandedly "redefin[ing] the process of programming"...
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Not to defend Wolfram, but to understand this you'll have to understand that "The Wolfram Language" is not like the traditional "programming languages". Of course not, its a New Kind of Programming Language.

fillybuster 12y ago

It looks like it is not a free trial but free with use limits. IE You can use it for free forever, but just not too much each month. Pay for more CPU time after you hit your limit or wait until next month to get more free time.

_delirium 12y ago
It looks like there's also a 30-day limit on "deployments" in the free tier. It's not 100% clear to me what that means, but I'd guess it means public-facing apps built on top of the API need a paid account to deploy more than as temporary/test setups.