Free mathematics ?

Hello,

Today, Mathematica is the most important software at schools and at universities for learning maths.
Learning maths means often to learn using Mathematica. However, Mathematica is not really free.

Would you know why Mathematica is freely available on the Raspberry PI ?
There were discussions that it could be removed, but it will still be present.

What about free mathematics?
It is still a mystery that such important software is not opensource.

With best regards,
SP. Math lover
 
thanks

Shouldn't mathematica be completely free, i.e. opensource, don't you think?

I never really understood why teachers/children/students have to pay for a software, to learn maths ... :(
This is unfair, plus teachers/children/students have to pay Microsoft Office on the top, which is not necessarily cheap for each of us.
 
Shouldn't mathematica be completely free, i.e. opensource, don't you think?
Things don't need to be open source in order to be free. There are lots of closed source applications out there that are completely free to use. The other way around is also possible, you can have open source code that is NOT free to use (several open source MP3 coders/decoders come to mind).

I never really understood why teachers/children/students have to pay for a software, to learn maths ...
Yet, paying for the books is fine? I still remember having to get a weekend job just to pay for the costs of the books I needed.

I'm of the opinion that education should be entirely free. No tuition, college funds, nothing. Free and accessible to anyone and everyone.
 
Things don't need to be open source in order to be free. There are lots of closed source applications out there that are completely free to use. The other way around is also possible, you can have open source code that is NOT free to use.


Yet, paying for the books is fine? I still remember having to get a weekend job just to pay for the costs of the books I needed.

I'm of the opinion that education should be entirely free. No tuition, college funds, nothing. Free and accessible to anyone and everyone.

Mathematica should be opensource, and certainly not a dead end close source software.
Remember maple ?
 
Yet, paying for the books is fine? I still remember having to get a weekend job just to pay for the costs of the books I needed.

That's crap. If you are rich, you can study easier.

The time you spent on hard work, it is time less to study and practice maths.

Maths need practice, as you know.
 
https://www.freebsd.org/ports/math.html

SageMath looks nice, I just added it to my poudriere build. There are others as well. Browse around to your liking and if there are better programs out there, just port them and let all benefit.

It is still a mystery that such important software is not opensource.
Because someone had to code it and expects to be paid for it. Not all software is written by volunteers, companies still pay for most of it.
Nevertheless, if something is missing in the open source world, step up and organize it. Code it. Test it. Don't whine about it, do something about it. Action improves the world, not words.
 
Our mathematics education system relies on mathematica only. Mathematica has replaced graphical calculators, like Ti, Casio,... It is cheaper to buy mathematica. The reason is that one can do much more things with it, and it is obvious that it can be recommended. However, ... this is not free. Which is actually not logic, because education should not oblige children/students to use close source software.

It would be nice to have more math softs, i.e. really free. sagemath is broken under Debian. :( It is anyhow running under Java, which makes it not so much reliable over the time.

Make it oneself maybe? There should be more educative projects in computer sciences, which involve developing an opensource source project for educative purpose. To plot sin( x ), it is easy, to proceed calculations with variables (in C). It can be written easily and it can run fast under C/C++. However to make a CAS, this is something else. It is less easy. Still, there are few CAS which are still free.
 
Mathematica should be opensource, and certainly not a dead end close source software.
Remember maple ?
Ridiculous. If Mathematica become opensource, who will pay the bills for it developers? People have families and families need money to sustain. It is the way it is, because it's just is, not anything unpractical it should be. You would say opensource not free, it's not exist on this earth. Even now they used crack tool, what will be then when they have the sources?

Your way of thinking, your ideology not works on this earth.

Unless big money like MS or GG or the Gov. who cares? bought the company and made it free (I think even them not stupid enough to made it open source). Please down to earth.
 
Ridiculous. If Mathematica become opensource, who will pay the bills for it developers? People have families and families need money to sustain. It is the way it is, because it's just is, not anything unpractical it should be. You would say opensource not free, it's not exist on this earth. Even now they used crack tool, what will be then when they have the sources?

Your way of thinking, your ideology not works on this earth.

Unless big money like MS or GG or the Gov. who cares? bought the company and made it free (I think even them not stupid enough to made it open source). Please down to earth.

Software, which are used for education, should be free, opensource. This makes sense.

Studying is really lot of money. Many cannot afford studying. Quite sad, don't you think ? :(
 
People with real talents, but a little bit poorer, cannot study and have do something else. People a little bit richer have a chance to study ...
Shouldn't McDonald's be completely free? Shouldn't your clothes be completely free? Shouldn't your house be completely free? Shouldn't you be working completely free?
education should be free, of course.

If you think about your nation, you would of course want to have a solid education system.
 
Software used for education should be free, opensource. This makes sense.

Studying is really lot of money. Many cannot afford studying. Quite sad, don't you think ? :(
I quit college because my family drained out of money. So I know. There are many attempt of the big universities or individuals to develop opensource or at least free alternatives. That is the best they can do. In the world, there is no 'should be'. Unless someone bought it and made it free, it's noway.

Ps: my country use Maple, of course crack.
 
People with real talents cannot study and have do something else, and people a little bit richer have a chance to study ...


education should be free, of course.

If you think about your nation, you would of course want to have a solid education system.
It could be sad but it's the way it is. Don't ask the world to be fair. When we were born, we are just there. We not even know why we are there and where we before and if we even have choices to born in other world.
 
It could be sad but it's the way it is. Don't ask the world to be fair. When we were born, we are just there. We not even know why we are there and where we before and if we even have choices to born in other world.

The world is not fair.

In the past (this time is over today), there were some nations that allowed "talents" to study.
 
What about The Netherlands?
Education? Getting more and more expensive. You can get a government scholarship but that's basically a student loan. You have to pay back every cent you got. So when you finish your education, even before your first paying job, you already have a few tens of thousands euro dept. Zero interest rates but still, a lot of money you have to pay back.
 
People with real talents, but a little bit poorer, cannot study and have do something else.

education should be free, of course.

It's called the Internet. I can study just about anything I want to the extent of my google-fu.
 
Dear Spartrekus: I agree that in the best of all possible worlds, software that's useful for education should be free. But we don't live in the best of all possible worlds. As others have pointed out, if Mathematica would need to be open source, it would probably (a) never been written in the first place, and (b) not be further maintained, for lack of revenue. But you have the power to do as Candide, Pangloss and Cunegunde: you can make the world better! Just go and write an open-source replacement for Mathematica, and release it. Nothing stops you. You claim to have understood the Unix philosophy (better than the people who created Unix, it seems), and you claim to love programming in straight C with no bloat, so go right ahead.

I also disagree with the statement that using Mathematica is in any way necessary to learn mathematics. I studied a natural science, and did many years of math in high school, and 5 semesters of intense math in college, and while symbolic algebra packages already existed back then, we did not use them. Instead we read textbooks, and did homework using pencil and paper. My son is currently a college student in a math-intensive major (this semester, he's taking the statistics class, which he correctly calls "sadistics"), and Mathematica is not part of the curriculum, nor very useful for understanding concepts. My office neighbor has a PhD in mathematics. Mathematica is a tool. It's like a screwdriver or arc welder is to a mechanical engineer. Learning to use screwdrivers is useful in and of itself, but won't make you into a good engineer who understands how mathematics really works, nor give you the intuition for the logic that is used in mathematics.

It would be nice if all education was free. As the (paying) parent of a college student, I am painfully aware at the high cost of education. But that's not the world we live in. Singling out Wolfram Research and punishing them for the fact that the world is this way is insane. All you would achieve would be to destroy Wolfram Research and then there is no Mathematica any more.
 
Take that elsewhere please. We cannot afford being associated with warez. The ban-hammer will be swift.
Exactly, no one wants to crack.
Not cracking, because cracking is illegal.

And books! They still have free libraries around, don't they?
Well, in practice...
1. Using free archive.org library, ebooks are about 50 years old, or 100 years older.
2. Wikipedia has not a detailed content.

@ralphbsz:
Very good to read that Mathematica is not obliged, at college level, where you do live.
Never heard a math teacher recommending to use Sagemath, even once :(
 
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