SAGE: Insight Into Open Source Technology

[The open source software project SAGE, based in our Department and led by William Stein, won first prize in the scientific software category of the 2007 Trophées du Libre. The following article was published in The Daily of the University of Washington on January 18th, 2008. We thank The Daily and Chris Paredes for permission to include the article.]

William Stein (right) and Robert Miller (left) work on a grant proposal to obtain new equipment for the development of SAGE. (Photo by Daniel Kim)

Last year, students trying to solve complex calculus problems and professors modeling galaxies had to use computer programs that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. However, this December, UW students and a professor won first prize with SAGE, an open-source math program, in the scientific software division of Les Trophées du Libre, an international competition for free software.

SAGE, which stands for Software for Algebra and Geometry Experimentation, is basically a free, high-level calculator.

Like Firefox is an alternative to Internet Explorer and Wikipedia is an alternative to Encyclopedia Britannica, SAGE is an alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and MATLAB, according to the SAGE Web site.

“When you purchase [commercial software], you get limited use and can’t make copies,” said William Stein, UW Mathematics professor and creator of SAGE.

SAGE is open source, which means users can change, copy and share it without worrying about a lawsuit. With commercialized code, mathematicians can’t scrutinize the code to see how a computer-based calculation arrived at a result.

“As someone doing research, you want others to be able to verify your work and continue to build on it. From an education standpoint, it is important to be able to see how you are getting a result, instead of just the result itself,” said Emily Kirkman, a senior who has been working on SAGE since spring 2006.

A core idea of open source is finding alternative ways to make programs similar to ones that are copyrighed. These new programs are more capable of addressing what people want, because the people using them can make the changes, said Robert Bradshaw, a fourth year graduate student working on the project.

“I like being able to build on what other people have done and watching other people take what I have done and make something even more exciting out of it,” Bradshaw said. “I like being able to share my work freely with everyone I know and lowering the barrier of them actually using it. And finally there’s the feeling that I’m simultaneously accomplishing what I need and donating something to the greater community.”

Students make up about 60 percent of the developers and about 70 percent of the users, Stein said.

“Typically SAGE gets 1,000 hits per month and our user base is 10,000; about 300 developers are on our [developer] e-mail list. Maple [a similar program] has about a million users, he added. Stein attributes low usage among professionals to the fact that some professors and engineers find it difficult to transfer their calculations to a new program. He said students appreciate the advantages SAGE provides, such as compatibility with non-open source programs and its ease of use.

Stein said students can download the programs on their computers via the Web site. Unlike Firefox, this program can’t be found on the UW library computers.

“It’s not on those machines, and we don’t plan to [put it on].”

Stein said that a UW-restricted network for SAGE would be in the works for later.

“First we want to start with faculty,” he said.

Funding for open source projects typically come from foundations, taxpayers and donations, Stein said.

“Firefox, for example, gets [funding] from Google. In some cases, [the open source version] is better. Handbrake, which allows users, among other things, to copy DVDs to iPods, is better than its commercial counterparts,” he said.

Often, open source programs start out worse than the commercialized program they are an alternative to, such as with Linux but they can improve with use, Stein said.

SAGE hasn’t made any money, and Stein is still trying to get funding through UW for SAGE.

“Another advantage to working in open source is that it is driven by the ambitions of users and developers rather than profits. It’s a very idealist stance—it makes SAGE more of a movement of the people,” Kirkman said.

SAGE has had six workshops so far, with five planned for this year. The eight UW students working on the project coordinate with students from schools such as MIT, UCLA and UCSB, Stein said. The workshops are an opportunity for students from across the nation to get together and collaborate in person.

Bradshaw said he saw only one drawback to open source software: “It’s not as obvious [though still very possible] to make a living producing and selling open source code. However, I don’t plan on coding for a living.”

Like other programs, there is always a new edition in the works. Stein points out that there are ways to ensure that developers stay in communication, since SAGE releases a new edition each week. Work on SAGE began at an American Math and Science meeting about three years ago, but most major changes started happening about a year and a half ago, when more people got involved.

“So much was psychologized [from] a large number of failures in similar open source programs that had been attempted before,” Stein said. “I thought it was absurd, but knew it needed to be done.”

Stein has even allowed interested high school students to help, and at least one has shown interest.

Stein said, “To make progress…I have to genuinely trust in other people and their capabilities.”

Chris Paredes, The Daily

William Stein (left), the lead developer of SAGE, and (left to right) student developers Josh Kantor, Yi Qiang, Robert Miller, and Tom Boothby view a mathematical model in 3-D. The 3-D feature was added to SAGE in January 2008. (Photo by Daniel Kim)