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by reikonomusha 4364 days ago
No, I don't love talking about it. I actually find it saddening and arduous.

I don't consider what I said "bad mouthing". Maybe it was. I tried to be as respectful as possible, and provide links where I could.

I am certainly trying to improve existing systems. I've written a library for doing computational group theory, for which a paper was just published, and I plan to include it in Maxima.

Regarding verifiability, Sage has a lot more going for it than "theoretical verification". Professional mathematicians, especially those in algebraic combinatorics, regularly hold conferences and write software along with papers to show correctness of the system, and write new mathematically grounded functionality.

I apologize to both the authors of open source systems and to potential consumers of such systems if I am driving them away. My goal is to at least spark the idea for one to step back and evaluate what it means/implies/etc. to make use of proprietary mathematical systems, especially in professional or academic settings.