Free Wolfram Engine for Developers • Hacker News Board

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#101

Post by LolWolf » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #84

LolWolf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll add to the list: mathematical modelling, optimization, control, essentially all machine learning, etc. Except for perhaps optimizers (which some of the best are closed source, e.g. Mosek), the entire rest of the stack is open source.

CUDA is not open source.

Sure.

Neither is the hardware, nor is Intel’s or the Motherboard’s, etc. Would it be ideal? Sure. Is it possible to have every level be completely open source? Maybe, but you’d struggle.

I still believe the point is clear, though.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#102

Post by mundo » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

reikonomusha wrote: post #3

> Why Aren’t You Using Our Technology? It’s not open source. Even if the engine is “free”, I don’t want to build an open source product with it and hope to be granted a “free production license.” If I build something on my own time I don’t want to ask my employer to purchase a “production license” as soon as it becomes useful. Wolfram believes that mathematics software (or “computational knowledge” or whatever he cal…

> It’s not open source.

WL is essentially just a bunch of useful functions collected into a common platform, and I think we already have the open source equivalent of that - it's called npm, and it's great, but it is very different, and it has some pretty big downsides which are the direct result of it being an open source project rather than a commercial product. I don't know if WL is as elegant or high-quality or deeply functional as Wolfram claims, but if it is, isn't that likely a result of it being built the way it's built?

It might be that there's a middle option - a way to open some core part of the language, while still keeping enough closed to make up a service layer that they can charge for, as you described - but today's announcement is pretty strong evidence that they considered that and rejected it. It seems pretty presumptuous to assume they got it wrong.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#103

Post by aflag » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #32

reikonomusha wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I’m being a stickler for language, but I don’t consider it “free for open source projects” if I have to contact them to get permission to use it in an open source project. My beef is that the word “free” is being thrown around in this article. They should say something more true, like “we provide this engine for experimental personal use at no charge, and if you want to use it for something serious (open sour…

A stickler for language should know that free is ambiguous in English, and their use of ”free” as ”zero cost” is correct. Gratis vs. libre and all that.

Correct, but misleading in the context.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#104

Post by kgwgk » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

LolWolf wrote: post #101

kgwgk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CUDA is not open source.

Sure. Neither is the hardware, nor is Intel’s or the Motherboard’s, etc. Would it be ideal? Sure. Is it possible to have every level be completely open source? Maybe, but you’d struggle. I still believe the point is clear, though.

Ah, you're right! The whole stack is open source if you ignore the non-open-source parts. (Intel compilers are also popular, by the way.)

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#105

Post by bdowling » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #52

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they open sourced it, it would be less than a year before you'd start seeing "Azure Wolfram" and "AWS Wolfram" and so on and I can sort of understand why he might not want that to happen.

> If they open sourced it, it would be less than a year before you'd start seeing "Azure Wolfram" and "AWS Wolfram" and using an AGPL licence, there would be no danger for them!

An Affero GPL (AGPL) license wouldn’t prevent AWS or Azure from competing with Wolfram’s cloud service, it would just require that they publish their changes to the source code. They’d still eat Wolfram’s lunch, which is why it won’t happen.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#106

Post by eps » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

reikonomusha wrote: post #96

nikofeyn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that’s completely at odds with how most software engineers work these days. Most software is grounded in an open source development and deployment tool chain. There is a market for proprietary developer tools, but it had been dwindling since its prime-time in the 90s. that is simply not true and a rather insular view. i build large complex systems, and all of it is done with proprietary software. in fact, it is…

I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but I am claiming it’s uncommon to use closed source developer tools (compilers, interpreters, standard libraries, etc.). The mere fact that the most popular programming languages in the world are provided as open source implementations is a testament to that. There are some stragglers. I think K is closed source. Commercial implementations of APL are closed source but somewhat popula…

Nearly all professional Windows development has been and still is done in Visual Studio.

This alone makes your "uncommon" claim void, and there are other examples outside of the Windows ecosystem equally well-rooted in proprietory tools.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#107

Post by jdiez17 » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

eigenspace wrote: post #95

jdiez17 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematica is basically a programming environment for the Wolfram Language. You can think of Mathematica as a desktop version of Jupyter Notebook for Wolfram Language.

I realize that. But what I said was that I'm not clear on what the 'Wolfram Engine' is and what it cannot do. It doesn't seem like a full implementation of the Wolfram Language for free, but I don't actually know. Or is it that it's missing the Mathematica front end but has a full backend kernel implementation?

Yeah, now I understand your question. Reading the blog post made me think it would actually be a full implementation of the Wolfram Language for free.

So I was curious and signed up for a developer license. I got to the confirmation page, which helpfully told me to run "WolframScript" to activate the license. But there was no download link, so I googled around and found this[1] page. They seem to only have packages for Fedora and Debian-based systems, but no biggie. I used `debtap` to convert it to a package that pacman can install, and then, moment of truth...

   $ wolframscript 
   WolframKernel not found.
   Use -configure to set WOLFRAMSCRIPT_KERNELPATH
   Or export WolframKernel=/yourpath/WolframKernel

Uhhh... okay? And where do I get this WolframKernel from? I looked around my Wolfram Account page, and I don't see anywhere I can get this from. Google also doesn't help me here.

So... it seems you probably need a full Mathematica/Wolfram license before you can use this anyway?

Well, that's disappointing.

EDIT: OK, you can actually download it from [2]. My bad.

[1] https://account.wolfram.com/products/downloads/wolframscript

[2] https://www.wolfram.com/engine/

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#108

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

carlob wrote: post #72

Disclaimer: Wolfram employee here. Opinions here are mine, and not the company's. Having used the Wolfram Language and Mathematica professionally for over seven years I think this is much cooler than the people who greenlighted this within the company realize. If there is one thing I love about the Wolfram Language is how fast it is to prototype something with it. Given the scope of the language (or what you call sta…

I fail to see how you build a business around this technology when you expect people to use it for predominantly investor demos and hackathons.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#109

Post by Spivak » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #93

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in production environments. Push is (as it should be) towards open source.

Mathworks' revenue is $1bn, it has doubled in the last decade. Someone may be using Matlab.

A ridiculously large number of people use Matlab as a tool. I can't think of a single engineer that doesn't curse its name regularly but I've yet to encounter any actual applications written in it.

It's Excel for engineers.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#110

Post by brobdingnagians » Tue, May 21, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

LolWolf wrote: post #101

kgwgk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CUDA is not open source.

Sure. Neither is the hardware, nor is Intel’s or the Motherboard’s, etc. Would it be ideal? Sure. Is it possible to have every level be completely open source? Maybe, but you’d struggle. I still believe the point is clear, though.

But I'm not so sure it would be ideal. There are things which thrive better as closed source. I prefer closed source IDEs, they tend to be better designed with better long term vision. Most open source projects suffer from a lack of long term vision, tight design, and funding. There are some which do well in those, but not the majority... There are quite a few things that thrive better as closed source which would have little chance as open source projects.

Proprietary closed source has a built in mechanism for funding. That's a major plus.