The n-Category Café

Someone should probably edit the post with the updated info.

I don’t see community held hostage by anyone.

It is governed so by itself. Witness the 20 years of Internet in every department and how it didn’t change a thing in operation of publishing cartel; The only reason being politics of establishing pecking order amongst mathematicians themselves.

All Grothendieck said in the last 20 years, including this letter, is he helds us all in contempt and that he despises the business of mathematical publishing and assignment of credit as rotten with unethical behavior. He did not say he will litigate, instead only cursed us, “may the shame of this contempt fall on those persons responsible for the unlawful editions and on the persons in charge of the libraries concerned”.

Wouldn’t your proposed Maths Public License just be Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial?

I have the strong feeling that the Creative Commons licenses capture enough different settings mathematicians might prefer. It’s just that very few mathematicians (re-)license their works under a CC license.

Maybe there is some reason for this?

It seems to me that the analogy is misleading, since the purpose of free software is specifically to enable the literal copying of source code, which if I understand correctly, is the only thing that copyright otherwise forbids; it doesn’t protect ideas. Are you talking about a license permitting literal copying of mathematical writing? That seems a bit odd to me—I think usually when we “reproduce but attribute” someone else’s math, we prefer to rephrase it in our own words anyway.

It is well known that, for instance, in SGA 4 there are mistakes. The joy of reading Pursuing Stacks, included seeing him dragging ideas from the darkness (and read some of the stuff that has been written on this to understand what he meant.) Those seminars, and the manuscripts were working documents, not meant as shrines to worship at, and perhaps all that AG is doing is saying ‘demolish the shrine’! I do not know. In what little we know of his more recent views, he seems to have reacted against personality cults in Science, including that surrounding himself.

On another tack, unfortunately ideas are plagiarised from archive papers, preprints etc. and credit always has been wrongly attributed. In the long view this does not matter, BUT it can be devastating in the career of a young mathematician. (In other documents, AG attacked exactly this in detailed cases.) If you don’t know it, do listen to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4vWJbwmqM

but I digress (another Lehrer quote!)

Now I feel sorry that I did not comment few days ago, as I predicted this move about the circle (it looked so logical as my advance prediction of the usage of sedative gas in the Moscow theatre siege few years ago by the Russian special forces). I mean I do not think that he would be bothered with copyright concerns itself, and especially not so suddenly; but certainly with something wider than that.

AG must have SEEN, it was my theory last weekend, something what has irritated him and being bigger than mere copyright issue. And if his books are a part of the irritating ensemble, then the circle of siding with his historical legend, which understandably he hardly may feel identified with, must be precisely of that kind. Notice that in general for a living mathematicians there are no fan sides, would you dare administer one for a great active mathematician ? Probably not as you could be criticised and inducing strange feeling in a living person. Maybe AG found internet and made a little google search (what is happening with my mathematics; he might have been curious) and maybe he found something seemingly beyond the scale of the good taste for privacy and peace he is used to outside of the fame in part of the mathematical world.

But the circle and retyping and the rest is there partly just because of the mistery he introduced with his misterious departures, stopping of communication, burning manuscripts and so on. While these moves may be most natural to his soul, they are externally the least natural for mathematicians nurished by the immense creativity he brought to the mathematics we all love and sacrifice big parts of our own lives for.

And most hurt by any break, specially of internet copies of his half-available work, will be mainly those who already suffered from being outside of the powerful towers of rich and strong mathematical centers and libraries of Moscow, Harvard and Paris, and alike. In Paris there is anyway enough many copies. But not in Tuzla, Bosnia, not in Ouagadougou and the rest of Africa, not in Guatemala. People in Guatemala did not have the chance to work with AG when he was active, now he wants in effect that this unjust thing be fortified and extended to deprave them reading his works, now when he is presumably not active any more, and the internet gave them chance to diminish the bad fate. I doubt that these are effects he really wants.

I see no reason to shut down that site just on the demand. He could come to them and discuss human to human his and their reasons. Then a better solution could be found, I am sure. With due respect the site is not his own, it is the site dedicated to the phenomenon of his opus and of love toward his way of mathematics. A denial is of no relevance to these notions at any abstract level; and raising human spirit to abstract understanding is something really beautiful. And of course he does know this. Thus the only real effect is prolonging the inequality between Paris and Guatemala as far as enjoying mathematical art is concerned.

Well, I would be much happier if he actually came back to mathematics, of course. But if he wants to be left alone, that's fine with me. I just wish that he would leave us (active mathematicians) alone too, instead of trying to inhibit us.

It doesn't help that we don't always leave him alone when he asks either.