I suggested Mathics because you appear to be interested in what Mathematica can do but resent that it closed source. Since it does not appear that it will be open sourced soon (Taliesin discussed this elsewhere and I got a similar answer from Stephen in an AMA http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/tmutz/stephen_wolfram_...), and because duplicating even a portion of a system with a 25-year head start would require a massive amount of effort, it seems the best choice would be to work on a program that would best organize the efforts of the other programs. To agree with that statement one probably has to agree that the language is the best one to build a system around.