Numerical Mathematics Consortium vs. scipy and numpy
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Hello all, the other day I ran across the following link ----> http://www.nmconsortium.org/. Are you, Python numerics guys, aware of this? I admit I have absolutely no idea about the actual usefullness and relevancy of this consortium and their drafts. But it might be useful just to be aware... Important players in scientific computation are involved. Best regards, Zdenek Hurak
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Zdene(k Hurák wrote:
the other day I ran across the following link ----> http://www.nmconsortium.org/.
Thanks for the pointer, it looks like a great project, let's hope it gets some traction. A few thoughts that are NumPy related: -- If nothing else, it's a pretty good list of stuff that "should" be included in Stock NumPy (and/or the core of SciPy). -- I notice they have: Matrix Operations, like: Elementwise Addition, etc. I don't, however, see any N-d array stuff: Too bad. (they do have "Multi-Dimensional Arrays Of Matrices" listed under present additional topics. Why array of matrices, rather than arrays of scalars? -- I'm personally not thrilled with the linear-algebra focus: for instance the matlab style for the operators: * matrix multiply .* elementwise addition. I'd rather see it the other way around. I wonder if we could get a Pythonista to join? In general, unfortunately, it looks to be quite commercially-focused: how does one get the open source community to be represented in this kind of thing? http://www.nmconsortium.org/client-area/registration/ -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer NOAA/OR&R/HAZMAT (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov
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On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, Christopher Barker apparently wrote:
how does one get the open source community to be represented in this kind of thing?
http://www.nmconsortium.org/FldRte/?id=70&page=Downloads hth, Alan Isaac
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Alan G Isaac wrote:
Were you pointing us to any particular document there? Full membership (that is, with voting rights) requires a $2500.00 a year membership fee. I think it'll be a bit tricky for an open source project to raise that kind of cash. The result is that you have to buy your way into the group, which favors commercial entities. Granted, they have operating expenses, and $2500 isn't all that much, but it's probably too much for open-source groups to get representation. An associate membership is $250./year, which is far more manageable, but then you don't get voting rights: """ The Associate Membership with no voting rights will have full access to the consortium’s output and be engaged in some of the consortium’s activities and is typically for the user community, both academia and industry ($200 annual fee). """ The SciPy community is not a "user" group, it's a developer group. there are other open source projects worth of representation, such as the GNU Scientific Library. Oh well. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer NOAA/OR&R/HAZMAT (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov
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Christopher Barker wrote:
I do not know the details, but one of the members of the consortium - Scilab consortium - is kind of open-source. Well, their license is not purely free (http://www.scilab.org/legal/license.html, http://www.scilab.org/legal/index_legal.php?page=faq.html#q6), but it is definitely not a commercial project. Perhaps some Scilab people could answer some open-source related questions. Note that I am not related to the NMC in any way, it is really that I only found this link and as a newcomer to Python computing community, I am simply interested what are the attitudes towards these issues here. Zdenek
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Zdene(k Hurák wrote:
the other day I ran across the following link ----> http://www.nmconsortium.org/.
Thanks for the pointer, it looks like a great project, let's hope it gets some traction. A few thoughts that are NumPy related: -- If nothing else, it's a pretty good list of stuff that "should" be included in Stock NumPy (and/or the core of SciPy). -- I notice they have: Matrix Operations, like: Elementwise Addition, etc. I don't, however, see any N-d array stuff: Too bad. (they do have "Multi-Dimensional Arrays Of Matrices" listed under present additional topics. Why array of matrices, rather than arrays of scalars? -- I'm personally not thrilled with the linear-algebra focus: for instance the matlab style for the operators: * matrix multiply .* elementwise addition. I'd rather see it the other way around. I wonder if we could get a Pythonista to join? In general, unfortunately, it looks to be quite commercially-focused: how does one get the open source community to be represented in this kind of thing? http://www.nmconsortium.org/client-area/registration/ -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer NOAA/OR&R/HAZMAT (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/39916bae984cb93b797efd2b175f59c0.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, Christopher Barker apparently wrote:
how does one get the open source community to be represented in this kind of thing?
http://www.nmconsortium.org/FldRte/?id=70&page=Downloads hth, Alan Isaac
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5dde29b54a3f1b76b2541d0a4a9b232c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Alan G Isaac wrote:
Were you pointing us to any particular document there? Full membership (that is, with voting rights) requires a $2500.00 a year membership fee. I think it'll be a bit tricky for an open source project to raise that kind of cash. The result is that you have to buy your way into the group, which favors commercial entities. Granted, they have operating expenses, and $2500 isn't all that much, but it's probably too much for open-source groups to get representation. An associate membership is $250./year, which is far more manageable, but then you don't get voting rights: """ The Associate Membership with no voting rights will have full access to the consortium’s output and be engaged in some of the consortium’s activities and is typically for the user community, both academia and industry ($200 annual fee). """ The SciPy community is not a "user" group, it's a developer group. there are other open source projects worth of representation, such as the GNU Scientific Library. Oh well. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer NOAA/OR&R/HAZMAT (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ac5bde252985583953ba1b36f42347b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Christopher Barker wrote:
I do not know the details, but one of the members of the consortium - Scilab consortium - is kind of open-source. Well, their license is not purely free (http://www.scilab.org/legal/license.html, http://www.scilab.org/legal/index_legal.php?page=faq.html#q6), but it is definitely not a commercial project. Perhaps some Scilab people could answer some open-source related questions. Note that I am not related to the NMC in any way, it is really that I only found this link and as a newcomer to Python computing community, I am simply interested what are the attitudes towards these issues here. Zdenek
participants (3)
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Alan G Isaac
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Christopher Barker
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Zdeněk Hurák