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Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

blog.wolfram.com

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Re: Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

#101

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

chrisseaton wrote: post #5

Most of these are about wanting control over the design of the software - but releasing their code doesn't have any impact on that - I don't get it? Java is open source - Oracle still tightly controls and manages the design of Java. For example 'Bad design is expensive' - how releasing your source lead to bad design? That's a complete non-sequitur.

Open source can either mean "publish the source" or "run it as a community project".

Most of the benefits of open source (for the company) would come from running it as a community project, which would imply giving up some of the control. Simply throwing the code over the wall without accepting contributions doesn't meaningfully benefit the company. There are of course graduations between "don't accept any contributions" and "let the community run it", but that's just different levels of giving up control.

I think "11. It takes steady income to sustain long-term R&D" is still the key aspect. Without money, software doesn't get maintained to a high level. Some projects work because many companies depend on it and contribute (but they wouldn't do it - or at least not nearly as much - if the project was strictly centrally controlled), but many other projects are basically one company running and publishing it and many others using it for free.

Re: Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

#102

Post by sidpatil »

chrisseaton wrote: post #66
chubot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are arguing it does have impact on that. The company that created Java went out of business and was sold to Oracle for a fraction of its original worth. So Java was a business failure -- or at least I'd be interested to see someone defend Java as a business success. So I think it's realistic to at least engage with their argument seriously rather than dismiss it. The argument is that open source licenses are inc…

> The argument is that open source licenses are incompatible with the kind paid license they're offering their customers. I don’t see them making that argument in all these points. For example they say > Crowd-sourced decisions can be bad for you Well ok that’s a valid point so… don’t do that. Crowd sourcing design decisions or code is not a fundamental part of open source. You can have open source but do all the dev…

> I think they’re confusing source licensing with a development methodology.

Which is why as nitpicky as it sounds, we should really be making an effort not to use the term "open source" to refer to both.

Re: Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

#103

Post by teleforce »

dralley wrote: post #26
sidpatil wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FORTRAN, the OG of scientific languages, is not slow. In fact, that's why it's still used to this day.

In fact it may well be the fastest language - although it's hard to compete with the sheer number of man hours spent on C/C++ compilers.

It is not the compiler per se, it is mostly down to the design of the language itself. D language based numerical library has already beaten popular Fortran based numerical library OpenBLAS/Lapack for several years now [1].

[1]Numeric age for D: Mir GLAS is faster than OpenBLAS and Eigen:

http://blog.mir.dlang.io/glas/benchmark/openblas/2016/09/23/...

Re: Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

#104

Post by krallja »

sjansen wrote: post #76
chubot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are arguing it does have impact on that. The company that created Java went out of business and was sold to Oracle for a fraction of its original worth. So Java was a business failure -- or at least I'd be interested to see someone defend Java as a business success. So I think it's realistic to at least engage with their argument seriously rather than dismiss it. The argument is that open source licenses are inc…

You've made the mistake of expressing an unpopular opinion, so you're getting down voted. I strongly dislike proprietary software, but you raise valid concerns that should be considered instead of being downvoted into silence. (edit: at the time I wrote this comment, the parent appeared to be headed for oblivion, happily that appears to have improved) I don't know that open sourcing Java killed Sun. More likely it wa…

Providing Java for free (no matter whether open or closed-source) was a big strategic blunder for Sun: it commoditized CPU architectures by providing an abstraction layer over them. Write once, run anywhere! The problem was, Intel chips were cheaper. So people just ran their Java workloads on their existing x86 PCs instead of buying expensive Sun hardware. Sun should have never written or released Java: it consumed resources, and hastened their demise.

Re: Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

#106

Post by cycomanic »

rp1 wrote: post #6

Almost none of the reasons have anything to do with releasing the source. You can release the source but still maintain central control. They shouldn’t even have posted this. Obviously they want to make money from their products, and that’s fine.

The irony certainly is that wolfram uses open source libraries (and there were some twitter threads that they might be aying a bit fast and loose with the acknowledgement of LGPL licenses)

Re: Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

#107

Post by Zigurd »

sjansen wrote: post #76
chubot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are arguing it does have impact on that. The company that created Java went out of business and was sold to Oracle for a fraction of its original worth. So Java was a business failure -- or at least I'd be interested to see someone defend Java as a business success. So I think it's realistic to at least engage with their argument seriously rather than dismiss it. The argument is that open source licenses are inc…

You've made the mistake of expressing an unpopular opinion, so you're getting down voted. I strongly dislike proprietary software, but you raise valid concerns that should be considered instead of being downvoted into silence. (edit: at the time I wrote this comment, the parent appeared to be headed for oblivion, happily that appears to have improved) I don't know that open sourcing Java killed Sun. More likely it wa…

What's wrong with that comment is that people think it is wrong for some fairly obvious reasons. for example: there is no causal link (which is also the point of the comment originating this thread). Examples of software needing to be open source to succeed, like other languages, the Android OS, etc. are easy to find.

Even your more qualified point has loads of counter-examples, that companies that did not start with their software as open source find it hard to succeed at open source: Google's search engine and much other software is not open source. Many companies mix their approach to open source with proprietary systems and products. As did Sun.

That Wolfram's justifications are weak is not necessarily a knock on their decision. But the specific point that "High-level languages need more design than low-level languages" seems particularly odd. There are high level languages where all the widely used implementations are open source and few cases of them becoming chaotic. I suppose there is survivorship bias in that observation but there are also obvious reasons why no language user community would have a lot of patience for a proliferation of variants.

Re: Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

#108

Post by temptemptemp111 »

Wolfram et al can't think their way out of a paper bag anymore because they're abstracted away the world and now live in their own fantastical fabrication. No pressure to go open source but this is easy to take apart:

1) A coherent vision requires centralized design » -- You can do that with FOSS

2) High-level languages need more design than low-level languages » -- You can do that with FOSS

3) You need multidisciplinary teams to unify disparate fields » -- You can do that with FOSS

4) Hard cases and boring stuff need to get done too » -- You can do that with FOSS

5) Crowd-sourced decisions can be bad for you » -- You can do that with FOSS

... Same for the rest, just saving myself time. These people can create endless content about their rationalizations for obfuscating how things really work. Which is hair-brained abstractions.

Re: Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

#109

Post by MichaelRazum »

VHRanger wrote: post #8

1 - 11: $$ 12. Doesn't want to show the world how bad the codebase is. Seriously, Mathematica makes naïve python code seem blazingly fast I've had the displeasure of porting 4k sloc of Mathematica to python and the script runtime went from 40min to 5sec.

Was my thought as well. Python is eating Mathematica and Matlab for lunch. I guess the reason is also, that FANG investend heavly in python. Even just by opensourcing tensorflow, pytorch, jax and so on.

Re: Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

#110

Post by notfromhere »

mateo1 wrote: post #90
VHRanger wrote: post #8

1 - 11: $$ 12. Doesn't want to show the world how bad the codebase is. Seriously, Mathematica makes naïve python code seem blazingly fast I've had the displeasure of porting 4k sloc of Mathematica to python and the script runtime went from 40min to 5sec.

I don't understand why this comment is so high up. It's just really naive to compare mathematica and python on runtime speed as if they're both tools used for the same purpose. Whether you like their choice of syntax or not, wolframs tools are state of the art on what they do. Just don't hammer your nails in with screwdrivers.

Wolfram had been trying to push its language as something that can replace python
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