Frequently Asked Questions
What does the name mean?
In linear algebra, an eigenbase is a vector space subset which has the
following properties, roughly speaking:
- Completeness: anything in the entire space can be expressed as
a linear combination of the eigenbase components
- Orthogonality: the eigenbase components are mutually
independent, meaning redundancy is minimized
- Characterization: the eigenbase components yield the most
natural or "characteristic" decomposition of the space with respect to
a particular operator
These also happen to be some of the properties desired for the
software developed by The Eigenbase Project. Plus, most of the other
prefixes like "super" and "hyper" and "inter" were already taken by
existing DBMS projects.
How do I pronounce that?
EYE-gun-base, unless you speak German.
How does The Eigenbase Project license its software? How much
does it cost?
The Eigenbase Project distributes open source releases free of charge
to the general public (without warranty). Licensing varies by sub
project; most components are released under the GPL, but certain
libraries (eigenbase-resgen, eigenbase-properties, and eigenbase-xom)
co-developed with the
Mondrian project are licensed
as LGPL, along with JGraphT and Enki; and the Blackhawk test framework
is released under the Apache Software License.
For GPL components, companies which make significant contributions to
the project are granted dual-licensing so that they can create
products derived from the open source codebase.
How can I help?
Currently, the most useful contributions are publicity and development
(coding, testing, experimenting, tuning, porting, documentation,
writing extensions, and integrating with other projects). Cash
donations are also welcome; The Eigenbase Project is a tax-exempt
501(c)(3) public charity, so donations are tax-deductible.
Is Eigenbase code free as in beer or free as in speech?
Eigenbase code is distributed under free software licenses,
meaning it's both. However, we use the term "open source" throughout
this website because The Eigenbase Project is
not
opposed to coexisting with closed source software (pace
Richard M. Stallman).