Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: AMS Notices: Open Source Mathematical Software

[Michel Lavaud]

Gabriel Dos Reis a écrit :
> On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, Michel Lavaud wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> | Personnally, I think the only valid, scientific way is the first one : any
> | work proposed for publication that uses commercial software ought to be
> | rejected by the referee, unless it says explicitly and honestly that it used
> | commercial, non-provable software, so that another researcher can then improve
> | on the article later, and publish another article using a completely Open
> | Source software and provide a complete, rigorous, verifiable proof..
>
> So, are you arguing for or a against
>
>  # If the plane I'm flying is built based on simulations with commercial
>  # mathematical software tools, I surely want them to be the best.
>
> ?
>
>   
I am not sure I understand the question, is it about your remark on 
planes ? If yes, it was more of a joke because I assumed your remark was 
too : was it not ? I would believe that big aviation companies use their 
own software, so it is Open Source internally, even if it is not 
published outside of the company. I assume that, if they use commercial 
software, they use it only in drafts or for double-checing, and they use 
their software for real definitive work ? My serious remarks were for 
software used by academic scientists, not by engineers in big companies.
> [...]
>
> | This trend is especially common among experimental scientists, for two reasons
> | : first, they have lot of money so they can buy very expensive software, and
> | second, there is an inherent uncertainty in experimental results, so they
> | translate their tolerance to errors in experimental results toward tolerance
> | to possible errors in commercial software, without realizing (or wanting to
> | realize) that errors in experiment and software are of a complete different
> | nature : error in an experimental measure is unavoidable and inherent to
> | experimental work, while error in a software is completely avoidable since it
> | is pure mathematics, expressed in a computer language instead of plain
> | English.
>
> That may be the case.  In the interest of rigor and openness as you
> promote, do you have data for that scenario we could all check so that
> it does not appear to be a gratuitous anecdote?
>
>   
Once again, I'm not sure I understand the question : which data would 
you like that "all could check" ? Do you mean a table that would list 
the number of licences of commercial softwares that were bought  in the 
various laboratories of my university, with prices ? It probably could 
be obtained, but I have not. All I can say is that, among physicists, 
chemists and biologists I know, only a handful use free software, most 
use commercial software under Windows, many use commercial software sold 
with measurement apparatus, or sold by vendors of software that organise 
journeys of formation and propose reduced prices for grouped commands. 
Those colleagues I know who use CAS use Mathematica, several chemists 
use very expensive software on workstations for representing molecules, 
some biologists use expensive software to analyze data. I know only one 
colleague who writes free software and distribute it on its web site. 
Linux is popular only at the computation center.

Best wishes,
Michel