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List:       suse-linux-e
Subject:    Re: [SLE] Closed Source on Linux?
From:       "Steven T. Hatton" <hattons () globalsymmetry ! com>
Date:       2005-11-17 23:53:36
Message-ID: 200511171853.36217.hattons () globalsymmetry ! com
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On Thursday 17 November 2005 06:17 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:

> Wolfram has as much right to be personally proud of Mathematica as Bill
> Gates has to be personally proud of Windows. In both cases, they're
> managers or executives, not technical contributors (at least not for a
> long time, now), so in my book, pride of accomplishment is not
> warranted.

I believe what Wolfram originally contributed to Mathematica is still 
essential to what it does today.  The same cannot be said of the technology 
Gates contributed to Windows NT.

> This makes me curious about who you are or represent, 

I'm just a reformed juvenile delinquent who gave up drugs for math, computers 
and physics.

> what has been the 
> nature of Wolfram Research's largesse towards you and / or your
> organization and why it was granted.

I purchased an upgrade to Mathematica a couple days before the next version 
was released.  They let me get the second $250 upgrade for free.  There have 
been other cases where they have been pleasant to do business with.  

I will say they have, in the past, been overly proud of their Motif GUI.  
There was a time when that pride was justified, but the GUI is now among the 
worst I use.  That, however, is merely a wrapper around the improtant stuff. 
Furthermore, they are now in the process of redesigning it, or so they claim.

I believe the Notebook interface can also be improved upon, and have provided 
significant feedback in that area.  But, as it stands today, with all it's 
clunkyness, it is a very powerful tool.

> > I assume you have concluded that I share your postion on this.  I
> > have no reason to complain about my dealings with Novell over the
> > years.  That is, until they took a swipe at the KDE.  I'm dead
> > serious when I say that much of my reason for supporting the KDE for
> > the past 7 years (IIRC) is a direct result of my experience with
> > Novell products in the Windows NT environment. When I saw that Novell
> > execs were double talking about remaining behind KDE development,
> > well...
>
> I don't know why you'd assume that. I cannot and do not pretend to know
> how you feel about Novell, 

I thought that would be clear from the discussions regarding the KDE, and the 
fact that I have advocated supporting them, and trying to do what we can to 
improve their cash flow so that they aren't forced to cut people, and/or 
projects.

Steven

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