Good day,
>Are you also going to stop doing your research on proprietary
hardware?<
That's an interesting question.
My point is that my work should not depend on one company's will. What
if I prepare a paper, doing all the work in some proprietary software
and then 2 years later, this company no longer exist or has chosen to
retire their product? The software I might have chosen to publish has
now become useless. A more likely scenario is that I want a colleague to
have access to my work, but I'm a Mathcad user and he's a Maple user.
He tend has to go out, buy Maple and so on.
I much prefer the scenario where I publish a file, and anyone with very
little effort can download the software for free in order to be able to
use my work.
What about proprietary hardware?
That's different because I don't software for the specific hardware. The
person interested in using my work doesn't have to buy a specific
hardware from a specific company. If my software is as portable as it
can be (and scripts written for Maxima are certainly portable), then it
would be like writting software for Maple that could also run under
Mathematica and Maxima. It would then be ok because the person doesn't
need to deal with a specific company or buy anything it shouldn't have
in the first place.
I see you are with Ericsson. Well, I wouldn't want to publish something
that requires people to get a specific device, say a cell phone, from
Ericsson. Of course, sometimes, it is a necessary evil, but if I can
avoid it, I would! I would much rather write something that can run
under any cell phone having the right features.
It doesn't mean you don't do it... but if you can avoid having your work
to depend on some company's arbitrary specifications... I think it is great!
So, programming either for proprietary hardware or software is evil
(hehehe!), but what I do for my PC is not "hardware programming". You
can use Java, ANSI C++, Maxima scripts, and so on... and all of these
are hardware independent. The same way, I try to remain OS independent.
If I go to such length, it is because I believe that on the long run, it
pays!
I wrote my M.Sc. using a proprietary word processor (AmiPro) and I
couldn't open my thesis now even if I wanted to. I wrote my early
software using Turbo Pascal (yes, I'm that old) and Delphi. All of this
software is now obselete and down the garbage can. However, I got wiser
later on and started writing my software in Java and portable C++. All
of this code is still with me... for a long, long time. My Ph.D. thesis
is in LaTeX, and I try to write my papers using LaTeX and it works
great. I don't worry about companies changing their product line or
going out of business.
All my work now can be done both under Linux and Windows. I know because
I use both every single day. I don't depend at all on OS.
I do depend on PC software... only up to a point because I moved
everything I could on my Visor and on my gaming consoles. Sure, Visor is
proprietary technology (not as much as one might think!), but the
formats and software I'm using are open (and I write my Palm software in
Java). If I could move across a greater range of hardware, I would.
You have to think about what will happen to your work in 10 years. Will
Maxima still be there, available for download? It is likely if it is any
good and if people gather around it (that's what I'm trying to
determine). However, as for proprietary software, you never know... and
even when it is still around, older file formats are never supported...
because businesses make a point of forcing you to upgrade (uselessly).
My philosophy? Use open software, hardware and formats whenever possible.
--
Daniel Lemire, Ph.D.
http://www.ondelette.com