Just donated to the J W. Eaton Consulting. Thank you for octave. I used it throughout the Andrew Ng's ML course.
Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
31–40 of 493 posts
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#32It seems that octave has been overtaken (in mindshare) by python/numpy. Why is that the case?
Matlab has always been a quirky language. It has good libraries for common math operations, good visualization tools, good documentation, and toolboxes available for many special tasks. There are a number of common pitfalls, with well-known workarounds, that cannot be fixed without breaking backwards compatibility. The performance of a "for loop" is usually dog slow (some special cases were optimized recently). You often spend hours figuring out how to vectorize your code so it runs decently fast. OOP and other techniques have been bolted on in a workable but unusual way, and they are not widely used. Licensing costs add up.
People looking for a free Matlab replacement often gravitate to a full replacement, rather than a clone. In the past, this meant learning something like C++, a significant hurdle to migration.
Python is generally seen as a much better general-purpose language than Matlab. It is building a much larger developer community. It is no harder to learn than Matlab, and it supports similar interactive development. Tools like numpy start adding easy support for Matlab's core strengths. Python is free, even in commercial deployments.
Matlab's primary competitor used to be Excel. Python is emerging as a very real threat. Outside of the core Matlab user base, preference for Python (or Go or ...) is building fast.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Working there, though, might preclude further work on Octave.
I'm guessing that when you're the BDFL of Octave you can negotiate a compromise.
No way.
I don't know what the relationship between MathWorks and Octave is, but probably the last thing MathWorks wants to do is give the creator their biggest competitor access to their trade secrets and proprietary information.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#34There's something fundamentally broken about the open-source model when you can invest so much time and npt get any sort of economic return. This seems like a huge limiting factor on open-source development. As I've pointed out in discussions on copyright issues, artists value copyright because the patronage model sucked - you're essentially dependent on people's charity and having to beg just to maintain basic econo…
> Nobody has solved the micro-payment problem yet
what is this problem?
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#35There's something fundamentally broken about the open-source model when you can invest so much time and npt get any sort of economic return. This seems like a huge limiting factor on open-source development. As I've pointed out in discussions on copyright issues, artists value copyright because the patronage model sucked - you're essentially dependent on people's charity and having to beg just to maintain basic econo…
> because the patronage model sucked - you're essentially dependent on people's charity
Also with copyright you are essentially dependent on people's willingness to pay.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#36Can you get academia to give you funding to continue the project? It's a common model in the bioinformatics world.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#37There's something fundamentally broken about the open-source model when you can invest so much time and npt get any sort of economic return. This seems like a huge limiting factor on open-source development. As I've pointed out in discussions on copyright issues, artists value copyright because the patronage model sucked - you're essentially dependent on people's charity and having to beg just to maintain basic econo…
> There's something fundamentally broken about the open-source model when you can invest so much time and npt get any sort of economic return. This seems like a huge limiting factor on open-source development.
The problem we have is that OSS creators don't realize, and often willfully ignore, the fact that nothing about opensource says you can't charge for delivering value to people. Sure, their ability to copy it themselves and do stuff might reduce your leverage, but I can almost promise you that a company which generates $10,000,000/year of revenue and relies on your software, will throw money at you if you ask. Especially if you say something like "You know, since you're not paying me for this, I can totally stop maintaining it at any point and then you'll be fucked because your business relies on this".
But many engineers don't like to be business people. So here we all are.
It's really not that hard: Do people's livelihoods and businesses rely on your work? Are you improving people's lives? Charge.
Doing it for fun and no interest in making a business? That's fine, but don't expect to make a living off of a thing you're not charging money for.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing that when you're the BDFL of Octave you can negotiate a compromise.
No way. I don't know what the relationship between MathWorks and Octave is, but probably the last thing MathWorks wants to do is give the creator their biggest competitor access to their trade secrets and proprietary information.
Maybe as humans we should be thinking bigger than things like secrets
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#39This is not a scalable model of software funding. People may send you money today, because its on their minds, but bills will have to be paid again next month, and next year. Please get yourself, a Patreon account, or something similar. Meanwhile, I'm sure MathWorks is looking for people with exactly your domain knowledge[0]. https://www.mathworks.com/company/jobs/opportunities/?s_tid=...
Patreon is awesome, but it's not enough to pay the bills full-time for most people. That said...anyone who owns an open-source project, is the primary contributor of said project and sacrifices a significant amount of possible revenue at their job to contribute to the project should have a Patreon page where anyone who feels like they want to contribute can do so. It may not be your primary source of income, but getting any income from your open-source work is a good motivator to keep working hard at making stellar software.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#40There's something fundamentally broken about the open-source model when you can invest so much time and npt get any sort of economic return. This seems like a huge limiting factor on open-source development. As I've pointed out in discussions on copyright issues, artists value copyright because the patronage model sucked - you're essentially dependent on people's charity and having to beg just to maintain basic econo…
Fully agree regarding your points about micro payments. Patronage, monopoly-priced copyright, and advertising have all proven to have bad side-effects.
IMO, the market may be acting rationally here. I have tried Octave several times, and always moved on with little regret. Genuine Matlab is tolerable for some prototyping tasks. A slow clone of Matlab has little value outside of academic environments where Matlab compatibility is required. Programmers use their favorite language, and others use a spreadsheet.