Putting the Wolfram Language (and Mathematica) On Every Raspberry Pi

An anonymous reader writes "Working with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, effective immediately, there's a pilot release of the Wolfram Language — as well as Mathematica—that will soon be bundled as part of the standard system software for every Raspberry Pi computer. Quite soon the Wolfram Language is going to start showing up in lots of places, notably on the web and in the cloud."

Comments

Blatant Shill

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite soon the Wolfram Language is going to start showing up in lots of places, notably on the web and in the cloud

lol no. It's far more likely that this language will be ignored by practically everyone. Remember Arc?

Web AND Cloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the web a "cloud" in of itself?

Re:Web AND Cloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

You see, one is hosted on someone else's server (or yours, should you so choose), whereas the other is hosted on someone else's server (or yours, should you so choose).

That's a bold claim.

[dmomo]

Raspberry Pi comes with no operating system. There are a number of Linux builds, including the recommended Debian build, which could be made to include the free Raspberry Pi version of the Wolfram Language and Mathmatica. To claim "every Raspberry Pi" is a bit hyperbolic.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[Fwipp]

Looks like you're right. A few links deep found this: "Today, at the CBM education summit in New York, we announced a partnership with Wolfram Research to bundle a free copy of Mathematica and the Wolfram Language into future Raspbian images."

Sample code

[Tablizer]

ego() ^ ego() ^ ego()

tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[Qubit]

Just in case you thought things might have changed:

As with Wolfram|Alpha on the web, the Wolfram Language (and Mathematica) on the Raspberry Pi are going to be free for anyone to use for personal purposes. (There’s also going to be a licensing mechanism for commercial uses, other Linux ARM systems, and so on.)

I give the RaspberryPi folks credit for making amazing and fun toy for children (that turns out to actually be a quite powerful and useful system for all ages, but shhhh, don't tell the kids! :-). I dearly wish that more of the RaspberryPI system could be Open Hardware, and love the fact that schoolchildren are getting their hands on their own computer that runs FOSS that they can program and tinker with and invent and dream.

But I dearly hope that the Foundation folks say "Thanks but no thanks" to this offer of crippleware. The platform should remain open to all, and putting something like this in a default install will perpetuate a system of haves and have-nots. If Wolfram wants to market this independently, then that is their perogative, but educational tools given to kids should be reuse- and remix-friendly.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[ebenupton]

I hope the Foundation folks say "Thank you, much appreciated", and let the kids decide.

That was pretty much what I spent the day saying. Atmosphere among the educators in the room when Conrad announced it this morning was pretty electric. If people don't like the fact that it's only free as in beer, there's always Sage.

Re:Why not just release it for the home users too?

[jones_supa]

He just wanted a larger user base for his comment by widely distributing it non-commercially.

Re:bloat?

[ebenupton]

Actually, we discard the AxPROT AXI signals as they leave the ARM complex, so it's not possible to distinguish between trusted and untrusted transactions at the memory controller. BCM2835 is actually one of the few ARM APs *not* to use TrustZone technology.