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Mathematica is an interesting case study for a general-purpose software package that happens to be more feature-full and functional -- not just "more convenient

Mathematica is an interesting case study for a general-purpose software package that happens to be more feature-full and functional -- not just "more convenient" or "better UX" -- than any open-source counterparts. I tend to use some proprietary scientific software, but a lot of it is because academia already has already invested in codebases for, say, Stata, GAMS, Matlab and so on. But Matlab is two steps removed from raw Fortran; and what sets it apart from the many identical-syntax clones are a few narrowly-oriented toolsets aimed at some kinds of engineers. Mathematica is the only one I buy versions for my home computer. It's very, very good.

cwyers 11y ago
> Mathematica is an interesting case study for a general-purpose software package that happens to be more feature-full and functional -- not just "more convenient" or "better UX" -- than any open-source counterparts. Isn't the world littered with such examples? Office is more feature-full than OpenOffice, Photoshop is more feature-full than GIMP, Illustrator is more feature-full than Inkscape, InDesign is more feature-full than Scribus, Avid|Final Cut|Premiere is more feature-full than any open-source NLE.
- thanatropism 11y ago
  OpenOffice is "good enough"; where Word isn't an option, it does the job. GIMP isn't even trying; it's not in the same market as Photoshop or casual image editing, which is well served by web apps these days. (One wonders what it is for; padding developer CVs, possibly) Finally, nonlinear video editing hardly qualifies for "general purpose" -- and is there anything worth mentioning as for open source offerings? Mathematica, on the other hand, is squarely in the terrain usually covered by open source.
  - cwyers 11y ago
    If nonlinear video editing isn't general purpose, then I don't see how Mathematica is.
  - the_af 11y ago
    Did I misunderstand or are you arguing GIMP is for "padding developer CVs"? That's a... fringe opinion, to say the least.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Well, GIMPs UI at least is totally unusable. I ended up using Krita instead, which actually has a UI that makes sense. Additionally, even Krita supports a lot more stuff than GIMP – from proper animations, keyframes to all kinds of color spaces. (Yes, 32-bit floats for CMYK color spaces are possible in Krita)
      - the_af 11y ago
        Yes, GIMP's UI is pretty awkward. No disagreement here. Still, for a lot of people, GIMP is a very valuable open source alternative to Photoshop; not as full-featured, of course, but then again, nothing is. There are lots of tutorials for achieving interesting effects using GIMP. I've never heard it described as something people learn to pad their resumes. Krita is pretty cool, too. If I'm not mistaken, it's not a full-featured Photoshop replacement either.
        frou_dh 11y ago
        Presumably they meant the resumes of those working on GIMP, not users of it.
        DonHopkins 11y ago
        Gimp's UI is almost as awkward as its name.
      - krick 11y ago
        I wonder how so many people manage to use "totally unusable" program. Krita is nice and all, but it's quite different product than GIMP, designed specifically for drawing, when GIMP is sort of "general stuff", like Photoshop is. And Krita is free and open source as well, so it doesn't support the original claim. And GIMP doesn't really lack many features Photoshop has, and even has some that Photoshop doesn't. UI could be much better (especially controls for transformations), but it's not that horrible either. The reason why GIMP sucks in comparison with Photoshop is that few features it lacks are absolutely game-changing. Like effect masks. If you use effect masks (and pretty much every proficient Photoshop user does), software without them is not an option for you. And I believe it isn't that easy to introduce them to GIMP either.
  - chipotle_coyote 11y ago
    OpenOffice is "good enough"... This is a matter of debate, depending on what circles you're traveling in. If you're working in a "mixed environment" where some people are using OpenOffice and some people are using Microsoft Word, you're likely to run into problems that range from minor annoyance to show-stoppers very quickly. Some of this can be blamed on Microsoft's weird file formats, but this is true not only for .doc files but for the better-documented (if arcane) .docx and, in my experience, even with RTF. I'm in contact with a fair number of small-to-medium press fiction editors, and while a fiction manuscript is one of the simplest use cases you can imagine in terms of formatting, almost every editor I've talked with has complained about OpenOffice (and to a lesser degree LibreOffice) screwing up comments and revision tracking. I don't really want to use Microsoft Word, but so far I haven't found an open source equivalent for my needs that is good enough. (The closed source Nisus Writer Pro and even Apple Pages seem to do better, ironically. But that's not to say they don't have their own problems.) I tend to think of open source's most well-established terrain as languages and server-side components where UI is not really a major issue.
    - simonster 11y ago
      Microsoft doesn't have the greatest support for OpenOffice/LibreOffice odt either, although they try (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between-the-OpenDocument-Text-odt-format-and-the-Word-docx-format-d9d51a92-56d1-4794-8b68-5efb57aebfdc https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between...). The fact that 90% of the world is using Microsoft's format is certainly relevant for everyday use, but it's orthogonal to the question of whether an open source project can achieve feature parity with a closed source product. File format compatibility is always hard and I'm not convinced MS does a better job reading odt than LibreOffice does with OOXML. But LibreOffice does have a reasonably comparable feature set, even if the UI is not as attractive.
      - cwyers 11y ago
        > LibreOffice does have a reasonably comparable feature set Pile up all the features Office has but LibreOffice doesn't on one side, pile up all the features that LibreOffice has but Office doesn't on the other. What pile's larger? It's kind of a pointless argument over whether or not LibreOffice has ENOUGH features; enough features for who? It's a global question with local answers. It's pretty easy to count who has MORE features, though, and Microsoft Office wins there.
- IshKebab 11y ago
  Yeah I don't know why he things it is rare. It's rarer that open-source software is more featureful and functional than competing closed source software. In fact I'm struggling to think of any that are clear-cut. The opposite is very common, as your list demonstrates. Also another big category is CAD, and CAM. There are no decent open source programs in that space at all!
  - cwyers 11y ago
    > It's rarer that open-source software is more featureful and functional than competing closed source software. In fact I'm struggling to think of any that are clear-cut. I think the canonical example has been web browsers, for instance.
    - gress 11y ago
      What is the example web browser?
      - cwyers 11y ago
        Firefox and Chromium vs Internet Explorer.
        gress 11y ago
        Today, no open source browser is clearly more featureful and functional than the closed source alternatives, so seems like a transient aberration rather than a canonical example.
        cwyers 11y ago
        I mean, the people who maintain far and away the most used closed-source browser, IE[1], are deprecating it and have tried to distance themselves from IE as much as possible in Microsoft Edge. And this is entirely because IE lacks features that Chrome and Firefox have, largely but far from entirely related to standards support for HTML5. I have been using Microsoft Edge since it was available in the Technical Preview, and it is not on par with Chrome or Firefox yet as a daily driver. I hope it gets there someday, but it's not there now. [1] Safari is kind of a border case -- all the chrome is closed source, but the rendering engine and I think the Javascript engine are open source. I am lumping it in as an open source project here, I can understand why someone might argue the point though.
- liviu- 11y ago
  I'd add Lightroom (± Silver Efex Pro) vs Darktable. It's generally hard for the (generally unpaid) open-source community to outperform something as big as Adobe.
et2o 11y ago
How is Mathematica generally more "feature-full"? What are you comparing it to?
- sedachv 11y ago
  Presumably Maxima (http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ http://maxima.sourceforge.net/) or SciPy (http://www.scipy.org/ http://www.scipy.org/)

cwyers 11y ago

> Mathematica is an interesting case study for a general-purpose software package that happens to be more feature-full and functional -- not just "more convenient" or "better UX" -- than any open-source counterparts. Isn't the world littered with such examples? Office is more feature-full than OpenOffice, Photoshop is more feature-full than GIMP, Illustrator is more feature-full than Inkscape, InDesign is more feature-full than Scribus, Avid|Final Cut|Premiere is more feature-full than any open-source NLE.

thanatropism 11y ago
OpenOffice is "good enough"; where Word isn't an option, it does the job. GIMP isn't even trying; it's not in the same market as Photoshop or casual image editing, which is well served by web apps these days. (One wonders what it is for; padding developer CVs, possibly) Finally, nonlinear video editing hardly qualifies for "general purpose" -- and is there anything worth mentioning as for open source offerings? Mathematica, on the other hand, is squarely in the terrain usually covered by open source.
- cwyers 11y ago
  If nonlinear video editing isn't general purpose, then I don't see how Mathematica is.
- the_af 11y ago
  Did I misunderstand or are you arguing GIMP is for "padding developer CVs"? That's a... fringe opinion, to say the least.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Well, GIMPs UI at least is totally unusable. I ended up using Krita instead, which actually has a UI that makes sense. Additionally, even Krita supports a lot more stuff than GIMP – from proper animations, keyframes to all kinds of color spaces. (Yes, 32-bit floats for CMYK color spaces are possible in Krita)
    - the_af 11y ago
      Yes, GIMP's UI is pretty awkward. No disagreement here. Still, for a lot of people, GIMP is a very valuable open source alternative to Photoshop; not as full-featured, of course, but then again, nothing is. There are lots of tutorials for achieving interesting effects using GIMP. I've never heard it described as something people learn to pad their resumes. Krita is pretty cool, too. If I'm not mistaken, it's not a full-featured Photoshop replacement either.
      - frou_dh 11y ago
        Presumably they meant the resumes of those working on GIMP, not users of it.
      - DonHopkins 11y ago
        Gimp's UI is almost as awkward as its name.
    - krick 11y ago
      I wonder how so many people manage to use "totally unusable" program. Krita is nice and all, but it's quite different product than GIMP, designed specifically for drawing, when GIMP is sort of "general stuff", like Photoshop is. And Krita is free and open source as well, so it doesn't support the original claim. And GIMP doesn't really lack many features Photoshop has, and even has some that Photoshop doesn't. UI could be much better (especially controls for transformations), but it's not that horrible either. The reason why GIMP sucks in comparison with Photoshop is that few features it lacks are absolutely game-changing. Like effect masks. If you use effect masks (and pretty much every proficient Photoshop user does), software without them is not an option for you. And I believe it isn't that easy to introduce them to GIMP either.
- chipotle_coyote 11y ago
  OpenOffice is "good enough"... This is a matter of debate, depending on what circles you're traveling in. If you're working in a "mixed environment" where some people are using OpenOffice and some people are using Microsoft Word, you're likely to run into problems that range from minor annoyance to show-stoppers very quickly. Some of this can be blamed on Microsoft's weird file formats, but this is true not only for .doc files but for the better-documented (if arcane) .docx and, in my experience, even with RTF. I'm in contact with a fair number of small-to-medium press fiction editors, and while a fiction manuscript is one of the simplest use cases you can imagine in terms of formatting, almost every editor I've talked with has complained about OpenOffice (and to a lesser degree LibreOffice) screwing up comments and revision tracking. I don't really want to use Microsoft Word, but so far I haven't found an open source equivalent for my needs that is good enough. (The closed source Nisus Writer Pro and even Apple Pages seem to do better, ironically. But that's not to say they don't have their own problems.) I tend to think of open source's most well-established terrain as languages and server-side components where UI is not really a major issue.
  - simonster 11y ago
    Microsoft doesn't have the greatest support for OpenOffice/LibreOffice odt either, although they try (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between-the-OpenDocument-Text-odt-format-and-the-Word-docx-format-d9d51a92-56d1-4794-8b68-5efb57aebfdc https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between...). The fact that 90% of the world is using Microsoft's format is certainly relevant for everyday use, but it's orthogonal to the question of whether an open source project can achieve feature parity with a closed source product. File format compatibility is always hard and I'm not convinced MS does a better job reading odt than LibreOffice does with OOXML. But LibreOffice does have a reasonably comparable feature set, even if the UI is not as attractive.
    - cwyers 11y ago
      > LibreOffice does have a reasonably comparable feature set Pile up all the features Office has but LibreOffice doesn't on one side, pile up all the features that LibreOffice has but Office doesn't on the other. What pile's larger? It's kind of a pointless argument over whether or not LibreOffice has ENOUGH features; enough features for who? It's a global question with local answers. It's pretty easy to count who has MORE features, though, and Microsoft Office wins there.
IshKebab 11y ago
Yeah I don't know why he things it is rare. It's rarer that open-source software is more featureful and functional than competing closed source software. In fact I'm struggling to think of any that are clear-cut. The opposite is very common, as your list demonstrates. Also another big category is CAD, and CAM. There are no decent open source programs in that space at all!
- cwyers 11y ago
  > It's rarer that open-source software is more featureful and functional than competing closed source software. In fact I'm struggling to think of any that are clear-cut. I think the canonical example has been web browsers, for instance.
  - gress 11y ago
    What is the example web browser?
    - cwyers 11y ago
      Firefox and Chromium vs Internet Explorer.
      - gress 11y ago
        Today, no open source browser is clearly more featureful and functional than the closed source alternatives, so seems like a transient aberration rather than a canonical example.
        cwyers 11y ago
        I mean, the people who maintain far and away the most used closed-source browser, IE[1], are deprecating it and have tried to distance themselves from IE as much as possible in Microsoft Edge. And this is entirely because IE lacks features that Chrome and Firefox have, largely but far from entirely related to standards support for HTML5. I have been using Microsoft Edge since it was available in the Technical Preview, and it is not on par with Chrome or Firefox yet as a daily driver. I hope it gets there someday, but it's not there now. [1] Safari is kind of a border case -- all the chrome is closed source, but the rendering engine and I think the Javascript engine are open source. I am lumping it in as an open source project here, I can understand why someone might argue the point though.
liviu- 11y ago
I'd add Lightroom (± Silver Efex Pro) vs Darktable. It's generally hard for the (generally unpaid) open-source community to outperform something as big as Adobe.

et2o 11y ago

How is Mathematica generally more "feature-full"? What are you comparing it to?

sedachv 11y ago
Presumably Maxima (http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ http://maxima.sourceforge.net/) or SciPy (http://www.scipy.org/ http://www.scipy.org/)