tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page)

Anweshi comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (3305)

Anweshi — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:02:06 -0800

For the sake of completeness, I add a link to n-cafe on the same topic.

David Speyer comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (3304)

David Speyer — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:19:01 -0800

I was not. Scott might have been, I don't know.

Harry Gindi comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (3298)

Harry Gindi — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:57:48 -0800

I have the pdfs that Laszlo had up, but I haven't tried to compile the LaTeX. You should ask Scott Morrison or David Speyer. I think they were working on it.

David Zureick-Brown comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (3296)

David Zureick-Brown — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:44:59 -0800

Did anyone succeed in compliling SGA4? It would be really useful to me right now to have a hyperlinked copy.

Anweshi comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2837)

Anweshi — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:51:12 -0800

Now the matter of whether this question is relevant for MO no longer arises -- it moved to blogosphere, where it properly belongs. However it needed to be in a high-profile blog like the SBS.

Scott Morrison comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2834)

Scott Morrison — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:23:44 -0800

http://sbseminar.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/grothendiecks-letter/

AS comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2816)

AS — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:12:34 -0800

Tyler, do you actually have the letter?

Clark Barwick comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2796)

Clark Barwick — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:42:08 -0800

Tyler: Thanks for the update. This is pretty bad news for those of us interested in the republication of these works, but it's good to know what the status is.

Tyler Lawson comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2790)

Tyler Lawson — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:47:16 -0800

This is in the interest of presenting some information about the situation.

Grothendieck has issued a "Declaration d’intention de non-publication" - Illusie has received a letter from him. In it (based on my poor French translation ability) he states that essentially all materials that have been published in his absence have been done without his permission. He asks that none of his work should be reproduced in whole or in part, and even further that libraries containing such pirated copies of his work remove them.

This obviously has ramifications for existing works far beyond SGA4, along with the imminent publication of "Recoltes et Semailles", the Mumford-Grothendieck correspondence in Mumford's collected works, and "Pursuing Stacks".

Apparently this is common knowledge in the French mathematical community already.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2725)

Anton Geraschenko — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:58:02 -0800

@Harry: I for one am glad you posted here, though I guess one could argue that posting here invites the same speculation I objected to in my last comment. For whatever reason, your post here didn't have that negative effect. I guess it's because the implicit question was, "should I ask this on MO?" and that's the question people started talking about.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2723)

Anton Geraschenko — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:30:30 -0800

I don't think this would be an appropriate question for MO. It invites irresponsible speculation and gossip. Even if it's carefully phrased to ask only for information about the future of the SGA re-edition project, it still feels like a gossip question. If the question is along the lines of "I hear project/organization X is doing Y; anybody know anything more?", it feels irresponsible to post about it on the world wild web rather than contacting the people behind project/organization X and getting the official account. I think Harry did exactly the right thing by emailing Laszlo.

I don't see a strong parallel with the MathSciNet question, since the question doesn't invite speculation about internal AMS decisions. If the question were something like "I hear MathSciNet is going to be free soon. Does anybody have more information?", then I'd argue that it's not an appropriate question.

Clark Barwick comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2722)

Clark Barwick — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:29:22 -0800

@David: No harm done. I have trouble reading tone on the internet, and I tend to communicate more formally than many might feel necessary.

@Pete: Thanks very much; that's just the kind of explanation I was looking for. I think I understand the issue now: in order for a subjective or speculative question to be a good fit here, one needs to be able to expect with confidence that a widespread consensus will be able to distinguish true sentences from false ones. (Possibly my misunderstanding here only reflected my own biases: I know more about the SGA re-edition project than I do about the workings of MathSciNet, so I didn't suspect that such a problem might arise.)

Scott Morrison comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2721)

Scott Morrison — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:56:05 -0800

Latex sources, downloaded form Laszlo's webpage, are available as a mercurial repository. Try

hg clone https://tqft.net/hg/SGA4

I can't actually compile everything -- let me know if you succeed.

Pete L. Clark comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2720)

Pete L. Clark — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:41:34 -0800

[@Harry: Erdos would say that Grothendieck himself has essentially just told us, again, that he is dead, and the action of the telling shows that he hasn't left yet.]

With due respect to all, I am inclined to agree with David (and also, implicitly, Harry) that this would not be a good MO question. It's much different to me than the alternative to MathReviews/Zentralblatt question. For the Grothendieck/SGA question, one needs specific [and potentially delicate and confidential] insider information in order to answer the question correctly as well as -- and perhaps this is even more important -- to evaluate whether an answer is correct. MO is for questions and answers that can be evaluated by a community of professionals in such a way that weight of the community usually [almost always, in my experience here] comes down on the correct answer.

It would be possible for someone to just completely fabricate an answer to the Grothendieck question ("I talked to Grothendieck, and he said..."). How am I to evaluate whether this is correct? The MathReviews/Zentralblatt question is completely different: I know what I think, in my imperfect and changeable but informed and professional opinion, about someone's answer to that.

Scott Morrison comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2718)

Scott Morrison — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:21:26 -0800

Harry said above he'd managed to download the files. I'm not sure if he just meant the PDF or also the latex sources. If anyone is interested, I have both. (Found by replacing .pdf with .tex, then compiling and trying to download missing dependencies.) It doesn't quite compile, but I think only because my latex-fu is weak.

Harald Hanche-Olsen comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2716)

Harald Hanche-Olsen — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:16:19 -0800

In defense of the monosyllable, I didn't see it as dismissive at all, merely as an expression of suprise. But maybe I have been hanging out on the Internet for too long and need to get my offense detector recalibrated. (It would have been different had the monosyllable not been followed by a reasoned argument.)

David Speyer comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2715)

David Speyer — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:11:48 -0800

My apologies for the monosyllable. I can see that it comes off as dismissive, which wasn't how I meant it.

I don't have more to say about the main issue, so I am going to sit back and see what others say.

Hailong Dao comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2714)

Hailong Dao — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:43:42 -0800

By the way, Harry, I think it is great that you start this discussion on meta before posting. That is something I can learn from in the future.

Hailong Dao comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2712)

Hailong Dao — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:18:10 -0800

I would love to see the answer to this question. But I would be a little worried if it is posted on MO. The issue, in my humble opinion, is not that only a couple of people know the answer. I have asked a few questions on MO with a hope that certain people will answer (in fact, isn't the strength of MO is we can get answers from the rare experts we don't know personally?). The trouble is questions about Grothendieck's life and personal decisions seem to often invoke strong emotion from people (from my limited experience), so the thread may turn into something more opinionated then we originally hope. May be I am just paranoid? But either way, if someone know the answer and it is not public, please email me, thanks a lot!

Clark Barwick comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2711)

Clark Barwick — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:03:14 -0800

May I ask you please not to answer me with grunts, David? The tone this creates seems needlessly dismissive and disrespectful; I would prefer to keep the tone less confrontational. I'm simply seeking clarification on the kinds of questions that are allowed here; if I am to continue to use this site, I'd like to know precisely what more experienced users find inadmissible about this question on the main page.

EDIT: I do want to emphasize that I interpreted this question not as a invitation to comment or speculate on Grothendieck's personality, political positions, or decisions, but rather as a request for more information on the status or future of the SGA re-edition project.

It may be that there is some misunderstanding about the project, so I should clarify. The SGA re-edition project does not consist of Yves Laszlo alone. The project began with SGA1 in the early 2000s under the editorship of Bas Edixhoven. Laszlo was also the coordinating editor for SGA2, and Philippe Gille and Patrick Polo are the coordinating editors for SGA3. SGA1 and SGA2 were published by the SMF, as will be the rest of the volumes, if the process moves forward. Every author except Grothendieck gave his/her explicit permission to reprint; publication proceeded without Grothendieck's explicit agreement because it was understood that his refusal for SGA to be re-published by Springer was "an objection against Springer and not one of principle."

It's not clear (at least, not to me) with whom Grothendieck corresponded. I don't think there's any reason to believe that only Grothendieck and Laszlo have knowledge of the situation or what the potential is for the continuation of the project.

I find the two questions similar in a variety of ways. (1) They are both questions of interest to a significant number of mathematicians. (2) Neither is a mathematics question. (3) Both involve a fair amount of rumor and speculation. (4) Engaging in either discussion effectively involves a certain amount of "insider" information (though I take your point that the MathSciNet question involves strictly less insider information). (5) Both discuss a community-based project designed to benefit a significant portion of the mathematical community and, in particular, the users of this site. (6) Both seek further knowledge of the future of that project, given certain constraints.

David Speyer comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2710)

David Speyer — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:04:36 -0800

Huh? I don't follow why you think the MathSciNet question is similar at all. Anyone who has written a review, participated in the management of a review site or refereed for a journal can think about what it would take to make a free version. The only people who know Grothendieck's reasons are Grothendieck and Laszlo.

Clark Barwick comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2709)

Clark Barwick — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:01:41 -0800

@Mariano: Anyone still involved in the project is likely to know something about the situation, and even some folks tangentially related with the project might know as well.

Mariano comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2708)

Mariano — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:54:29 -0800

But it is the kind of question which can only be resolved by writing to Laszlo. That is emimently different from all other questions on MO.

Clark Barwick comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2707)

Clark Barwick — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:48:48 -0800

I don't follow your objections, David. This question seems to be considered acceptable; it's even one of the most popular questions on the site, and it's caught the attention of many of the most serious-minded users. Nevertheless, it seems virtually impossible to answer it in any other fashion than with gossip and speculation. Why shouldn't your objections apply there?

On the other hand, many of us are interested in getting a modern print version of SGA out, and many of us have been involved in various stages of the project. So: (a) it seems likely that there would be plenty of interest among users of this site in this question, and (b) it seems odd to claim that "almost no one reading the site has any actual knowledge."

David Speyer comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2706)

David Speyer — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:00:46 -0800

I don't think this is a good question for MO for the same reason that "Does anyone know why the Clay Math Institute reduced their postdoc funding?" was not a good question. Almost no one reading the site has any actual knowledge, so we will be getting gossip and speculation, not answers. If you're interested, why not e-mail Laszlo and (with his permission) post the reply on this thread?

Clark Barwick comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2705)

Clark Barwick — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:16:18 -0800

Of course I'm new around here, but it seems to me that, properly tagged, this is a reasonable question for MO. (Plus, I'd also like to know what's going on!) It's not a mathematics question per se, but it certainly will be of interest to mathematicians. What do the moderators think?

Harry Gindi comments on "Strange message on Yves Laszlo's SGA 4 page" (2704)

Harry Gindi — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:38:41 -0800