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Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#121

Post by [deleted] »

simias wrote: post #113
criley2 wrote: post #55

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. Imagine saying this with a straight face. Maybe in web development, but the vast majority of programmers are using closed source tools to produce closed source software. You're either thinking of a tiny picture vs the whole picture (web devs vs programming…

The parent goes too far in one direction and you go too far in an other. I work in embedded linux development and my entire toolchain (kernel, userland, compiler, flashing tools, and desktop environment) are 100% open source. I suspect that people who target Windows or Mac OS might be in a different situation but that's to be expected, when you target a closed proprietary environment you end up having to use closed p…

[deleted]

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#123

Post by mhh__ »

romantype wrote: post #116
slig wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't they use a more restricted license that prevents that?

Which more restricted open source license would prevent that? There is none!

It can be done. If no license allows you to what you want, get your lawyer/s to draft one for you

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#125

Post by jforberg »

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.

No, your point is still extremely muddled. Cuda and Wolfram are both compilers/runtimes, they fill exactly the same role of translating high-level code into something that can run on hardware.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#126

Post by palebluedot »

criley2 wrote: post #55
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…

>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. Imagine saying this with a straight face. Maybe in web development, but the vast majority of programmers are using closed source tools to produce closed source software. You're either thinking of a tiny picture vs the whole picture (web devs vs programming…

You're either thinking of a tiny picture vs the whole picture (web devs vs programming in general) or you honestly have zero concept of what programming looks like outside of web apps.

To give some more pushback on this assertion... I've been developing software for 21 years now, and the only positions I had where there was negligible open-source software were in the first couple of years (in the automotive firmware space [OnStar], and a brief stint in some defense contracting). For the last 18-ish years--firmware, systems, enterprise, virtualization, demos, security--everything I've worked on has largely been based on open-source software, or the product was open-source itself. What I've never done professionally: Web app development.

Honestly, I think it would be hard to overstate the prevalence and impact of open-source software in the field of programming (and really, the entire tech field).

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#127

Post by babyloneleven »

GordonS wrote: post #92
enriquto wrote: post #52

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 using an AGPL licence, there would be no danger for them!

There are ways around this. I quite like what TimescaleDB have done, with most features OSS, and the more advanced features are under an open source license that permits use for those building a product around it, but preventing TimescaleDB as a service.

There is no open source license like that.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#128

Post by romantype »

eigenspace wrote: post #86
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…

Personally, I've found thing since learning Julia I've become pretty distrustful of the whole notion of prototyping in one language and then doing a full implementation in another. It just seems so unnecessary when you have a language where you can start out in a highly interactive state that seems a lot like Python or Matlab but then you can seamlessly start optimizing or generalizing functions and end up with somet…

Do you now find that doing both the prototype and full implementation in Julia the better option?

Sorry, couldn't figure this out from your comment whether you prefer Julia or some other language for doing the prototype and full implementation. If you can clarify this explicity, it would be helpful.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#129

Post by rch »

reikonomusha wrote: post #67
criley2 wrote: post #55

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. Imagine saying this with a straight face. Maybe in web development, but the vast majority of programmers are using closed source tools to produce closed source software. You're either thinking of a tiny picture vs the whole picture (web devs vs programming…

I’m open to being wrong, but my domain is not and has not been web apps. It’s mostly been things like satellite antenna control software, quantum computers, scientific computing, and AI. Each of those domains, in my experience, has been firmly grounded in open source. (It does not mean, of course, that the end product is open source.) I recognize there are some domains that are steeped in closed source solutions with…

An exhaustive list would get tedious pretty quickly, but I'm imagining that using this engine would be roughly equivalent to building around Rogue Wave IMSL libraries or Mapbox Atlas.

It seems like using the SDK in your language of choice would be a reasonable way to leverage the engine where it makes sense.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#130

Post by [deleted] »

LolWolf wrote: post #71
enriquto wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In applied math, data science, statistics, the OP is right: free software is the norm.

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.

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