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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

I looked all over their website, but could’t find a link to download the source for the Wolfram Language so I can compile it. Do you have a link?

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Someone will correct me if I am wrong, but Wolfram products are proprietary (read - you need to buy the license or subscribe to it), just like MATLAB.

If it’s not open source then it’s a non-starter, it doesn’t matter how cool it is. This is not an ideological free software stance, it’s a recognition that science has embraced the utility of open source tools and rejected black boxes. It’s essential for reproducibility and transparency in research. It’s no longer enough to provide your code in a paper supplement or on GitHub; the entire chain must be available for inspection, including the language itself.

EDIT: One common exception to this principle is the use of proprietary C or Fortran compilers for high performance.

They tried to get it out for freeon the raspi but I guess the uptake was really quite low. Either way the program for that has basically ended. https://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/

I don’t see any source there. Was is open source or just beer-free?

It is not and has never been open-source. In fact they wrote https://blog.wolfram.com/2019/04/02/why-wolfram-tech-isnt-op... .

I'm aghast at this point: https://blog.wolfram.com/2019/04/02/why-wolfram-tech-isnt-op...

The blog post was probably literally written in and hosted entirely on open source software which were highly innovative at their earlier stages and continue to be highly innovative. This is a very self-serving presentation of an idea. Also, I officially dislike the word innovation.

Its a good thing that it did not take off. Using something for free without source code is the bad thing that could happen to pi wrt to its mission.

The Pi is built on a foundation of binary blobs. As I read it, https://www.raspberrypi.org/about/ is a lot more focused on free-as-beer than free-as-speech.

They are giving a lot, I respect them a lot for that. They are practical about it too, of course, compromises have to be made everywhere.

Does this mean SAS will finally die?

Aren't you already perfectly aware this is not open source? From your profile I must assume you are.

Why do you say that?

Because apparently you are writing a book about Julia. I assume people who write books about a language which are also in vogue in the scientific community, they are aware of the eco-system of said community. Mathematica is not exactly a new kid on the block.

Why don't you answer the question?

The answer is that I did not know, and that’s why I asked. Mathematica is not a big part of the scientific research world as far as I’m aware. I don’t know anyone who uses it in physics research, for example. The last time I played around with Mathematica was in graduate school before Linux existed, when closed source and proprietary solutions were the norm. Back then I don‘t think there was anything like the Wolfram Language independent of the Mathematica product. So when I heard that this language now existed, I wondered if it was open and, therefore, something that might be interesting to use in research. From your tone I suspect that you won’t believe any of this. I’ll leave it up to your fevered imagination to divine how much I care about that.

The "Wolfram Language" name is essentially just a rebranding of Mathematica to highlight the fact that it does way more than just math now.

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