[Tugindia] maths software hassle

[Ajay Shah]

On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 11:53:47PM +0530, LinuxLingam wrote:
> in the light of the pune workshop coming up on maths for academia and others.
> 
> The Wrong Choice: Locked in by license restrictions
> http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/05/21/1640251
> 
>     Michael S. Mimoso writes "Sucked in by advertising, Jameson C. Burt
>     bought a proprietary mathematical software application four years ago.

Hmm, I didn't know matlab was such a pain.

>     This year, he discovered that he couldn't move that program to new
>     hardware without paying hefty license fees. That's when Burt realized
>     he'd made the wrong choice." 

The 'big 5 free software choices' for doing mathematics, in my
opinion, are:

   Octave               (GPL implementation of a subset of matlab)
   R                    (GPL implementation of 'S')
   maxima               MIT Macsyma, symbolic math
   GSL                  Gnu scientific library
   gnuplot              Nice scientific graphics.

I would strongly recommend each of these packages; they're really
good.

        -ans.

-- 
Ajay Shah                                                   Consultant
ajayshah at mayin.org                      Department of Economic Affairs
http://www.mayin.org/~ajayshah          Ministry of Finance, New Delhi