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Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

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Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#61

Post by jhbadger »

sotojuan wrote: post #54
vcistan-inmate wrote: post #41

I don't understand how YC can fund non-profits like VotePlz and the ACLU while not funding stuff like this. All of the startups funded by VCs use free software, often exclusively, but these VCs continue to refuse to adequately fund its development. Marc Andreessen even publicly boasted about how much OSS his companies use[1], which he of course doesn't pay for. I also shudder to think of how Eaton will fare on the jo…

You said it yourself—Octave isn't trendy or cool.

The problem is I think Octave missed its window. 20 years ago when I was in grad school, everybody was using Matlab and a competitive open source version would have been a killer app. I looked into Octave at the time, but it was basically a toy at that point. I looked into it recently, and it really has come a long way, and even has an official GUI similar to Matlab's, but these days Matlab is kind of fading out and R is what everybody seems to be using.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#62

Post by viraptor »

vanattab wrote: post #25

I have not tried the octave GUI in a couple of years but back then it was awful. In my opinion this has always been octaves biggest weakness. If they would fix this I am sure they gain significantly marketshare from matlab.

> back then it was awful

I think you'll have to expand on that. "awful" is neither useful nor constructive. Do you mean compatibility, interface, documentation, something else?

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#63

Post by astrodust »

thedevil wrote: post #55
vcistan-inmate wrote: post #41

I don't understand how YC can fund non-profits like VotePlz and the ACLU while not funding stuff like this. All of the startups funded by VCs use free software, often exclusively, but these VCs continue to refuse to adequately fund its development. Marc Andreessen even publicly boasted about how much OSS his companies use[1], which he of course doesn't pay for. I also shudder to think of how Eaton will fare on the jo…

> Will he be whiteboarded? I like the way you word it - it makes it sound like a form of torture.

The lights in the conference room flickered intermittently, a slight buzz heard each time they dimmed. Something was dripping on to the ceiling tiles from above, a large orange colored stain had developed in the corner.

The interviewer leaned in again, his tie loose, his face covered in stubble. He'd been at this for four hours now and it was showing.

"Tell us your social media passwords."

The candidate flinched back, shaking his head.

"I told you, I...that's illegal, you can't ask for those."

The interviewer clasped his hands together, cracked his knuckles, and flashed a big grin. With a swift motion he swiped a marker from the table, flicked off the cap, and stabbed it in the direction of the candidate.

"Write a linked-list implementation in C. Oh, and because you've been such a tough-guy you only get to use malloc...once. In the main function."

A bead of sweat quickly ran down the candidate's face. He looked tense, fraught with concern. The sound of his teeth grinding together wasn't hard to hear.

"S-seven salamander six exclamation three five."

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#64

Post by mhermher »

jlarocco wrote: post #27
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #17

This 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=...

I agree this type of plea isn't sustainable, but going to work for MathWorks is just a ridiculous suggestion. I can't believe you even seriously suggested it. There's such a giant conflict of interest you might as well suggest RMS go work for one of the remaining legacy UNIX vendors.

Obviously he/she would have to stop contributing to Octave.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#65

Post by lazarus101 »

jlarocco wrote: post #27
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #17

This 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=...

I agree this type of plea isn't sustainable, but going to work for MathWorks is just a ridiculous suggestion. I can't believe you even seriously suggested it. There's such a giant conflict of interest you might as well suggest RMS go work for one of the remaining legacy UNIX vendors.

I'm sure Apple or Microsoft are looking for people with exactly his domain knowledge. Just imagine RMS as the Keynote Speaker for the next WWDC

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#66

Post by Isamu »

sotojuan wrote: post #54
vcistan-inmate wrote: post #41

I don't understand how YC can fund non-profits like VotePlz and the ACLU while not funding stuff like this. All of the startups funded by VCs use free software, often exclusively, but these VCs continue to refuse to adequately fund its development. Marc Andreessen even publicly boasted about how much OSS his companies use[1], which he of course doesn't pay for. I also shudder to think of how Eaton will fare on the jo…

You said it yourself—Octave isn't trendy or cool.

Hey, I used it in Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course on Cousera. It was that or Matlab.

Nothing trendier than ML, so I'd recommend going that direction.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#67

Post by dflock »

bravura wrote: post #58
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #17

This 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=...

Would you donate a recurring amount monthly to open-source software development? Imagine a site that auto-bills your credit card every month. You can specify projects you want to support, or just support a portfolio of projects that someone else has devised. If so, please fill out this quick survey. I'm curious if this idea has legs: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfXIqUqsfDoUplWeWYs...

You mean like this: https://salt.bountysource.com/

Obviously, there are also lots of open source people earning income from Patreon and the traditional bountysource too - but salt is the Bountysource clone of Patreon, specifically for OSS.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#69

Post by anigbrowl »

Swizec wrote: post #37
anigbrowl wrote: post #28

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. 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 th…

I think this is maybe a reaction to the way AT&T made Unix so expensive and inaccessible to hackers for so long that the idea of charging $$$ for something whose marginal cost of production was effectively $0 that the idea of charging money was morally repulsive to a lot of key figures in the movement.

In a way OSS seems like the sort of thing that would have worked great in some hypothetical enlightened communist system that didn't suppress liberty.

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