William Stein (SageMath blog)
sagemath.blogspot.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
William Stein, founder of SageMath, writes about open source math software, SageMathCloud, and the business side of open source projects.
What HN saysCommenters cite it for his account of why Sage was built against closed tools like Magma, his views on open core licensing, and a pricing gripe.
25HN people shared it
9linked it in comments
37stories submitted
1.2Kstory points
6 years agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1Conception, birth and developement of a Free math software (Sage)3 people · 16 points · first shared 2009 · 8 comments on HN
- 2What is SageMath's Strategy3 people · 5 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 3RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software2 people · 409 points · first shared 2016 · 120 comments on HN
- 4React, Flux, RethinkDB and SageMathCloud – Summer 2015 Update2 people · 154 points · first shared 2015 · 62 comments on HN
- 5Sage Math Cloud2 people · 63 points · first shared 2014 · 15 comments on HN
- 6RethinkDB must relicense NOW2 people · 15 points · first shared 2016 · 2 comments on HN
- 7Mathematical Software and Me: A Very Personal Recollection (2009)2 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 8Open source is now ready to compete with Mathematica for use in the classroom1 people · 225 points · first shared 2016 · 62 comments on HN
- 9Jupyter: “take the domain name down immediately”1 people · 83 points · first shared 2016 · 38 comments on HN
- 10The Simons Foundation and Open Source Software1 people · 76 points · first shared 2015 · 32 comments on HN
- 11DataDog: Don't make the same mistake I did--followup; unhappy customers1 people · 38 points · first shared 2017 · 4 comments on HN
- 12Sage: Can There be a Viable Free Open Source Alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab?1 people · 23 points · first shared 2008 · 15 comments on HN
- 13A Non-technical Overview of the SageMathCloud Project1 people · 5 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 14SageMathCloud – History and Status1 people · 5 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 15DataDog's pricing: don't make the same mistake I made1 people · 4 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
williamstein · 2016-07-22
dmytton you have done a FANTASTIC job on your pricing page (https://www.serverdensity.com/pricing/)! I just got screwed by DataDog's confusing pricing page (http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2016/07/datadogs-pricing-dont-make-same-m… Your's is the ultimate example of what to do right. WOW.
Fede_V · 2014-10-24
There is an excellent blog by the creator of Sage:
http://sagemath.blogspot.it/2014/08/you-dont-really-think-that-sage-ha…
Sage is absolutely amazing, but it is very far behind the cutting edge CAS systems (MAGMA/Mathematica) - I think he is being a bit harsh in his assessment, but he has incredibly ambitious goals - and by those goals, he has fallen short.
rz2k · 2014-08-20
I believe that Sage was modeled after Magma, which isn't important, but I highly recommend this long blog post by William Stein[1] talking about his motivations, the problem of basing academic work on closed source software, and in the case of Magma, the potential politics of even being able to get the software.
[1] http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2009/12/mathematical-software-and-me-very…
bentoner · 2014-02-27
Sage is going strong. Their new cloud service https://cloud.sagemath.com/ is fantastic (multiplayer ipython omg).
Amusingly, they are also going partially-closed source: http://sagemath.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/what-is-sagemathcloud.html
hdevalence · 2014-02-27
For an excellent description of another instance of this sort of issue, see [1] about Canonical and Mir.
Github seems to have things pretty figured out: they have a closed core that they control, with a veneer of hackability, and a lot of hype. You then get people to work for you for free by having them create plugins that, while open source, are effectively controlled by Github, Inc.
The key thing is to make people feel that they're contributing to a community, even though that community doesn't really have ownership of the work. By the time the tension between the community's needs and Github's needs comes out, you've already locked everyone into your ecosystem.
Other notable instances of this phenomenon include the MAGMA computer algebra system, and the creation of SAGE (see [2]).
[1]: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html
[2]: http://sagemath.blogspot.ca/2009/12/mathematical-software-and-me-very.…
js8 · 2017-06-27
"The problem of sustainability for open source scientific software projects is significant."
Yeah, William Stein can tell these stories too: http://sagemath.blogspot.cz/2015/09/funding-open-source-mathematical.h…
niftich · 2017-02-06
The GNU Affero GPLv3 has been a recurring topic during RethinkDB's existence, but I cannot substantiate the same having been an issue for MongoDB. Links appreciated.
Some instances of people asking about GNU Affero GPLv3 and RethinkDB:
(2014-11-16) https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/3347
(2015-06-16) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rethinkdb/g5UEck3sqMs
(2016-10-10) https://sagemath.blogspot.com/2016/10/rethinkdb-must-relicense-now-wha…
(2017-01-09) https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/6221
cben · 2014-05-11
More details: http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2013/08/latex-in-cloud.html
intellectable · 2015-09-08
Possible donate the credits to an open source project?
I suggest contacting @williamstein [0] who has been actively seeking help to fund Sage Math Cloud [1]. See post here [2] and here [3] for reference.
I'm living on credit cards -- I have no NSF grant support anymore, and SageMathCloud is still losing a lot of money every month, and I'm unhappy about this situation. It was either completely quit working on SMC and instead teach or consult a lot, or lose tens of thousands of dollars. I am doing the latter right now. I was very caught off guard, since this is my first summer ever to not have NSF support since I got my Ph.D. in 2000, and I didn't expect to have my grant proposals all denied (which happened in June). [3]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=williamstein
[1] https://cloud.sagemath.com/
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10175563
[3] http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2015/08/react-flux-rethinkdb-and-sagemath…