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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

#191

Post by eyan »

anigbrowl wrote: post #179
eyan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying 'it's not a business model' is basically equivalent to saying 'I don't have to worry about money.' No, Sir. I think the point flew past you. Saying "it's not a business model" means that you need to worry about how to sustain yourself from the get-go if you want to go where ever pleases you, open or closed source.

Obviously, but given the low prospect of getting paid for doing open source work on it will be performed primarily by those who don't need a return on the time invested.

I totally agree with this analysis.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#192

Post by aoeu345 »

astrodust wrote: post #185
aoeu345 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I used to live with a guy who used the Magic Lantern firmware add-on for certain Canon cameras, which was very powerful free software that had a community forum. He would tell me about how he'd shit talk the devs for not including some feature or when something wasn't working. It's pretty terrible.

Having a community leader who isn't afraid to crack some heads to keep people in line is always important. People like this poison any community. Make a Code of Conduct and use it to control your community rather than let your community control you. It's like parents complaining their kids are "out of control" and "there's nothing I can do". Seriously? We've been raising kids for a hundred thousand years. This shit i…

This is good advice. Don't be afraid to wield the ban hammer.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#193

Post by mrkgnao »

santaclaus wrote: post #118
kafkaesq wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will his work on Octave--which by all rights should be able to serve as a strong-enough resume by itself to justify his hiring--even be looked at by potential employers? It'll probably register on the backs of their eyeballs somewhere. Some of them might even might even experience some momentary flash of recognition: "Octave? Right, yeah. Some GNU thingy..." before catching themselves and saying "Well that's, nice. B…

Ha, I'd love to see a youtube series in which famous old-school open source devs apply for web front-end gigs. Episode I, Linus Pair Programs.

This reminds me of the Joshua Bell-on-a-subway project some years back. :)

: read en-dash

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#194

Post by dragandj »

bzbarsky wrote: post #115
brianwawok wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people would rather save 1,000 people from Malaria in Africa than give 1 white college educated man living in one of the richest counties on earth a year's salary to write code from his home office. (I am sure it happens, but I am sure that it is pretty low on the donation list)

For what it's worth, http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ins... estimates about $3000 per life saved (which I will grant is not the same thing as "malaria case prevented"). So a year's salary for a good developer would be on the order of 30-150 lives saved, depending on market and definition of "good"... Agreed with your overall point, though.

The cost of one Matlab license could save a human life, by such accounting.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#195

Post by [deleted] »

bzbarsky wrote: post #115
brianwawok wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people would rather save 1,000 people from Malaria in Africa than give 1 white college educated man living in one of the richest counties on earth a year's salary to write code from his home office. (I am sure it happens, but I am sure that it is pretty low on the donation list)

For what it's worth, http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ins... estimates about $3000 per life saved (which I will grant is not the same thing as "malaria case prevented"). So a year's salary for a good developer would be on the order of 30-150 lives saved, depending on market and definition of "good"... Agreed with your overall point, though.

[deleted]

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#196

Post by tylerhou »

Isamu wrote: post #66
sotojuan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can use Python; someone created bindings:

https://github.com/mstampfer/Coursera-Stanford-ML-Python

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#197

Post by wpietri »

anigbrowl wrote: post #178
wpietri wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Closed source isn't a business model either. A business model is where you figure out who will give you money in exchange for value delivered. If you need money, you probably should think about that. And then you'll need to spend some time on execution of that plan. I get that programmers just want to make things and have people use them. I feel that too. But pretending that "open source" is a business mo…

Closed source is a business model because the customer wants what your software does but can't see how it's achieved, so they pay you money to buy a license instead of just re-implementing it.

No.

I have a ton of closed-source software in my projects folder. That's not a business model. Neither is open-source software, where I take some of that stuff and throw it up on GitHub.

A business model is where I repeatably create value for others and receive money in exchange. A modern software company can do that in a variety of ways, including selling training, documentation, support, custom features, consulting, services, and licensing.

Both open- and closed-source companies do that. They have business models. But open source on its own is not a business model, and neither is closed source.

And what's definitely not a business model is releasing something as open source and hoping that somebody gives me money. Businesses don't just happen. Somebody has to build them.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#198

Post by pksadiq »

fsloth wrote: post #189
sandGorgon wrote: post #116

This post today is what is wrong with open source software. If someone knows jwe, then they should tell him that lots of corporates and startups WANT to support stuff like this. But you cannot give a paypal link and expect donations. As a company, I cant do that. I need an invoice. Hell, if you can get a business account, I daresay you will get subscriptions. I like to call this "gratitude-ware". Check out Sidekiq Pr…

My heart breaks each time I discover a free tool of recognition is developed by some altruistic talent who lives at a near poverty level while their work generates millions in added value. I suppose the simplest way would be to offer dual licensing. GPL for non-profit projects, proprietary for enterprises. The problem is, if the source code you are working on depends on third party GPL software it's very hard to do t…

> GPL for non-profit projects, proprietary for enterprises.

This is against the GNU GPL license terms. One can't conditionally license some code under GPL. Ie, a software released under GPL can't be restricted for some purpose (here, 'for non-profit').

The "no string should be attached" is for good. Say for example, a project says "For people to help learn writing code, I'm licensing my project under MIT License," it would be wrong to not release the source code (and only the binary) even if the code is in MIT license. Because that is the purpose why the developer choose MIT for his/her project.

IANAL, but some corporate may be able to turn such carefully crafted words into money with their pricy lawyers. Most of the people are unaware of this. And for this reason, GPL can't be done the same way.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#199

Post by kriro »

grzm wrote: post #80
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…

I don't understand how YC can fund non-profits like VotePlz and the ACLU while not funding stuff like this. Whenever I read something that starts off along the lines of "I don't understand" or "It makes no sense" I wonder how much time the poster has taken to put themselves in the shoes of those they can't understand and rough out ideas that might make sense to them. Look at VotePlz and the ACLU, the other startups Y…

They could set up a fund of sorts and just take stock of what FLOSS software the current batch/all running batches use and distribute some amount of money that way.

They could also just hire prominent FLOSS folks as exclusive consultants for their batch companies which could actually turn out to be rather valuable.

They could also set up a special mini-incubator focused on helping FLOSS developers build a business around their software.

I think there are a lot of rather interesting strategic options.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#200

Post by taway_1212 »

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…

I have a theory on why Google insists on whiteboarding senior-level candidates. I don't think it's for checking for talent as much as for checking for motivation.

Think about it - in order to pass, you basically need to drill those algorithmic exercises for weeks before the interview. If you do, it's a very good signal that you really want to work for Google (similarly, investment banks, management consultancies, prestigious law firms make their associates go through a very tough ordeal after hiring to weed out those that don't want this career bad enough). And it makes sense - for a majority of jobs at Google, you don't need to be super talented, but you need to have internal motivation to keep working on the same boring code for months/years before (if ever) you get picked to work on something interesting.

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