Maple Express
1476Visual Studio Express which is a small version of Visual Studio available for free download, has appeared to be very successful in 2 directions. First, it practically killed all other C and C++ compilers for Windows, as well as decreased number of people using cygwin and mingwin. Second, many people downloaded it and used it for some time at home, have made their companies to buy Professional or Team Suite versions for their work. It started with VS 2005 and continues now with VS 2008.
Why not to try to follow Microsoft in that direction and to produce a small Maple Express version - with libraries on the Maple V level, just with updating linalg to LinearAlgebra and new Statistics package, with only command line and Classic interpreter, without Maplets and without Java, without Optimization and other new packages, only on one platform, Windows, and make it available for free download and other free distribution programs - laptops for Africa etc.
If it worked so great for Visual Studio, it should be good for Maple as well, I think - for similar reasons.
Alec
- I agree
2 min 9 sec ago - simpler
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I find another
1 hour 51 min ago - interesting idea
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8 hours 5 min ago - okay Alec, ofc that's the
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Many years ago
when I was "ambassador" of Maplesoft in Argentina, I have insisted with them that the way to go was something similar to your proposal, acording to that time: a cheap basic version (internet access was hardly available, hence no thing as a free download).
At most I have got vague answers and no action.
Powerful marketing tool
Such a program is clearly a very powerful marketing tool, as Microsoft's experience already shows. But it can be made even stronger: instead of trying to release a crippled Maple [which is technically very very hard to do], why not simply release a full version of an old Maple? That would send a clear message: Maplesoft thinks that newer versions offer so much added value over older versions that we're willing to give you old versions for free.
I would suggest to release the oldest usable version, Maple 6, free. Then next year when Maple 13 comes out, make Maple 7 free, and so on. Making a version of the software that is 7 years old available free should not cut into current sales. Anyone who argues that it would is also saying that their R&D efforts for the last 7 years have been totally worthless!
Maple 8
If this were done now then it would be nice if the released version were Maple 8.
However, there may be some forwards compatibility problems related to certain operating systems. On Windows and Solaris it would likely be OK. On Linux (32-bit) there might be glibc problems.
Earlier Maple versions
That's, certainly, a good idea too.
I think, I have Maple versions from 6 to 10 though. Personally, I would be more interested in earlier Maple versions - for collection purposes. I remember how I got excited 3 years ago when Tom Lee posted Maple V Release 1 demo in his blog . It seems to be not available there anymore.
Alec
PS Is it really that hard to make Maple Express? I thought that it could use the same kernel and the same Classic Interface (with, maybe, graying out functions in the context menu that are not available, or displaying a message that it is available only in the complete version), and the libraries were built in chronological order, I think, so earlier libraries shouldn't have many references to later libraries. One can write a simple script indexing all the functions and their references. Are there some other things that should be done? -Alec
Maple Express
If by "Maple Express" you mean a reduced capability Maple, yes, it is technically very difficult to do that, with any release. Building cross-release is just as hard, as every release has a library that definitely depends on kernel features of the same era. It was tried a few times, and each time the effort was abandoned because the results were not satisfactory.
Old interface?
And what about a Maple V Release 5 interface, say, with the earliest kernel/library that works in current OSs?
In fact, that interface works for me better than Classic GUI (not to say Standard...).
Old interface
The code base for Maple V R5 interface is largely the same as 'Classic' ! I guess some ``bug fixes'' in Maple 6 through 8 might have made things worse.
In any case, that won't work either, as there will be new DAGs in more recent Maple kernels which will likely crash the old GUI if it ever receives that.
Classic crashes
The crashes of the Classic GUI are, in general, within the category of "non reproducible", ie unsuitable to make a standard SCR. Nevertheless, Microsoft presumably receives the reports of these crashes, as generated by Win XP. I wonder whether Microsoft has any communication with Maplesoft when receiving these reports.
I have a frequency of crashes of Classic under Win XP of one or few per week. Many orders of magnitude higher than the OS. Ten years ago or so, with Maple V R5 say, under Win 95 (or 3.1) the situation was exactly the reverse.