Re: -- Wolfram Research QA process defect

On 3 Mar, 09:22, Martin Rubey <axiom...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear Dave,

Dave <f...@xxxxxxx> writes:
Have you considered open-sourcing your code? Parallel processing could be
used by getting a large number of people to hunt for bugs, in the same way is
projects like Seti

I agree with some things you say, but on the other hand, I think that Wolfram
and MapleSoft could just as well be grateful to Vladimir. Or did he so far
discover only bugs/shortcomings that Wolfram knew about anyway?

Finally, why doesn't Wolfram open source Mathematica? Yes, they want to earn
money. Even though Vladimir has bad chances, it seems to me that he would like
to earn money, and so far he chose not to do it via the open source
route. (Although I believe he would be better off doing so.)

Vladimir is only likely to earn money from his code by either
licencing it to commerical companies like Wolfram Reserach or acting
as a consultant to them. If he acted in a professional manner, he
might well be able to do that. But it is hard to believe that given
the way he presents bugs, Vladimir will ever find such companies which
to work with him.

Even a competitor such as Mathworks is unlikly to wish to work with
someone who finds bugs in their competitors products, but reports them
in the way he does.

Finally, I must say that I find it rather surprising that people choose to work
for Maple / Mathematica without getting paid.

Lots of people do things for a hobby that others get paid for.

In fact, they even pay
themselves! Yes, I know, the free and open source alternatives are not as good
with respect to some important features (in other cases, they are better,
though). But why should we promote expensive, closed source software
unnecessarily?


Martin

.

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