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Mathematica Version 12 Released

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#71

Post by wemdyjreichert »

carlob wrote: post #11
maliker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like he's far from open sourcing it. His team just published a long blog post ( https://blog.wolfram.com/2019/04/02/why-wolfram-tech-isnt-op... ) explaining why they're closed source.

Honestly I read most of those reasons as reasons for not being free and community-driven as opposed to not being open-source, and also more as a post-hoc justification than a prediction on what will happen in the future. As a matter of fact a large part of the Mathematica codebase is inspectable (the part that is written in Mathematica itself) [1]. Disclaimer: I'm a Wolfram employee, but these are my opinions and any…

I'm more wondering why Mr. Wolfram would open-source the code, rather than why he would not.

Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#72

Post by aflag »

philipkglass wrote: post #49
carlob wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misread my comment. I'm agreeing with you on the importance of being able to inspect the code and I'm strongly against black boxes. Where I don't agree with you is that open-source === free and community driven. There are a myriad of hybrid models where a for-profit company releases the code, yet doesn't accept pull requests from the community. The all-or-nothing attitude that you just showed is actually…

Non-free licenses that nonetheless make the source code available to licensees have long been used for scientific software. This licensing model alleviates concerns about black boxes even if it does not align with the FSF's mission. Is all Mathematica source available to licensees? Is there any additional cost for a source code license? I understand that most companies (and sometimes even research groups) need/want t…

It alleviates some of the concerns about black boxes, but it doesn't really help with reproducibility, as other people who don't have access to the code will not be able to reproduce the results easily. That is, they won't be able to download the original source and fully understand what's happening.

Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#73

Post by [deleted] »

mschuetz wrote: post #19

Might seem dumb but the thing that drove me away from Mathematica are the stylesheets. Mathematica used to have a useful stylesheet that visibly separated input, output and text content. But at some point, I think version 8 or 9, they removed that stylesheet. All the remaining stylesheets either don't properly distinguish input and output, or look like crap. I lost interest in reinstalling that stylesheet whenever I…

[deleted]

Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#74

Post by gregschlom »

jakobegger wrote: post #43
JorgeGT wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always Mathematica for the Raspberry Pi, completely free for personal use! https://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/

I would want to use Mathematica for work related stuff, though.

Well then maybe your company can afford it, no? (Unless you're a bootstrapping startup, of course)

Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#75

Post by phonon »

jakobegger wrote: post #39

I wish Mathematica was more affordable. I loved using it as a student, but now I can no longer afford it. A professional license costs 3500€. Which is probably worth it if you use it every day, but not so much if you just use it just once a month to make a graph or integrate something. They have a "hobby" license for 350€, which is reasonable, but according to their license it can't be used for anything work related.…

Maybe http://www.wolfram.com/development-platform/pricing/ ? There is even a free plan. Not sure how different it is from "regular" Mathematica, or what licensing restrictions there are.

Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#76

Post by phonon »

arnoud-buzing wrote: post #36
thomasahle wrote: post #31

> nowadays the vast majority of what the Wolfram Language (and Mathematica) does isn’t what’s usually considered math I wonder how much of actual Mathematica use is outside of mathematics. The new AsymptoticSum and AsymptoticSolve functions sound useful though!

It's used in more places than you'd think, e.g. Alexa: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18726804

That's Wolfram Alpha.

Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#77

Post by cr0sh »

jakobegger wrote: post #39

I wish Mathematica was more affordable. I loved using it as a student, but now I can no longer afford it. A professional license costs 3500€. Which is probably worth it if you use it every day, but not so much if you just use it just once a month to make a graph or integrate something. They have a "hobby" license for 350€, which is reasonable, but according to their license it can't be used for anything work related.…

Have you looked at Octave?

https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#78

Post by z2 »

aloer wrote: post #68
z2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curiosity as well. At a live presentation I went to a couple of years back, his laptop couldn't connect to my company's projector. The first thing he said was along the lines of, "Fascinating! I've never come across this specific problem before!" Literally every other presenter I've seen facing such an issue would bemoan technology or crack a joke about things 'always' being broken.

He actually is interested in this and talks about it in his recent blog post here https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-producti... Search for EDID > for high-profile, high-production-value events, I have a little box that spoofs EDID strings to force my computer to send a specific signal, regardless of what the projector seems to be asking it for.

Wow, that was totally unexpected! Thinking back (circa 2013), I wonder what video quality lessons he got out of that particular set-up. From what I recall, we had something awful:

1) Presenter computer plugged into some sort of video capture hub, connected to computer A with video capture card that would composite camera video with slides. 2) Separate computer B running remote desktop into that computer to broadcast to the web. 3) Another computer C, also with remote desktop, connected to the projectors.

Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#79

Post by askvictor »

cr0sh wrote: post #77
jakobegger wrote: post #39

I wish Mathematica was more affordable. I loved using it as a student, but now I can no longer afford it. A professional license costs 3500€. Which is probably worth it if you use it every day, but not so much if you just use it just once a month to make a graph or integrate something. They have a "hobby" license for 350€, which is reasonable, but according to their license it can't be used for anything work related.…

Have you looked at Octave? https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

Octave is more a replacement for MATLAB than Mathematica.

Re: Mathematica Version 12 Released

#80

Post by philipkglass »

aflag wrote: post #72
philipkglass wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-free licenses that nonetheless make the source code available to licensees have long been used for scientific software. This licensing model alleviates concerns about black boxes even if it does not align with the FSF's mission. Is all Mathematica source available to licensees? Is there any additional cost for a source code license? I understand that most companies (and sometimes even research groups) need/want t…

It alleviates some of the concerns about black boxes, but it doesn't really help with reproducibility, as other people who don't have access to the code will not be able to reproduce the results easily. That is, they won't be able to download the original source and fully understand what's happening.

That's true, and it is a reason that free software with a public VCS history is really the gold standard.

I've worked with enough non-commercial but restrictively licensed academic software that I'm willing to forgive commercial vendors for similar transgressions, so long as there is full source available to licensees.

Though I admittedly steer clear of restrictively licensed code when at all possible now. I gave up on GAMESS and switched to really open quantum chemistry software because I tired of not having any revision history in the source tarballs, and of having to re-agree to the license every time I wanted an updated version. Also because I want to build software that can be installed in a fully scripted headless manner, and a "fill out the license agreement" step precludes that.

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