I like Octave so I just sent some bucks. Doesn't hurt me, but helps the cause.
Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
241–250 of 493 posts
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
"10.000" What number is this? Is it ten? Ten thousand? I don't think decimal (thousand) separators are necessary when you can write the number without, use scientific notation or the number in words. But there is an English-speaking standard (comma) and an international standard (thin space). Considering that there are at least five better options I think this usage is perverse.
Some countries use dots instead of commas for thousand separators.
And I was arguing that it is a bad idea to do that in an international forum.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have watched how people use crypto-currencies to donate for a long time. I also tried it for a own privacy-project which has over 10.000 users / day. Since you can see the donation-amount in the blockchain, I'm free to say that "blockchains" are not the solution to this problem. People do not donate, no matter if via paypal or bitcoin.
"10.000" What number is this? Is it ten? Ten thousand? I don't think decimal (thousand) separators are necessary when you can write the number without, use scientific notation or the number in words. But there is an English-speaking standard (comma) and an international standard (thin space). Considering that there are at least five better options I think this usage is perverse.
> Considering that there are at least five better options I think this usage is perverse.
Wow
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#244Is it just my feeling/bias or projects under the GNU umbrella suffer the problem of not putting the developers at the center of the project enough? One of the things you should get back from doing something like Octave, is to be recognized at least in certain parts of the software community. When an OSS project is a GNU project maybe it is less likely to get the deserved credits, that later may lead to positions, don…
I agree that being under the GNU isn't necessarily good for projects. Look at https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=octave for example. Many of these patches have in fact been merged, but nobody really knows how to use this bug tracker. Actually editing the wiki requires asking on IRC. See here: https://octave.sourceforge.io/
Octave should have a steady stream of students who have been made to use Matlab trying to use it instead. If the barriers were lower these people might get hooked on contributing. As it is, I imagine they take one look and think "old and busted". I don't think it's necessary to use Github, but the development tools should be something people can use frictionlessly, which isn't the case now.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#245I 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, pre…
Obedience school.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#246This 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…
A couple of thoughts: - Octave won't die. It won't die even if you ditch it altogether. A lot of companies depend on it because licenses are free and that makes it easy to do massive parallel computations by launching thousands of instances. Matlab doesn't let you do that. As long as it stays GPL, the employees within those companies and academic institutions will continue to contribute to it. (Python is competition,…
Err, the Parallel Computing Toolbox for MATLAB is specifically designed for cluster computing, multicore processing, GPUs, etc.
As much as I detest the MATLAB licensing reaming (and sometimes the inelegance of the language itself), there is very little out there approaching the sheer depth of the associated toolboxes and Simulink models.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#247I've never used so much octave (except for a couple of exams at university), but 25 years of life and work devoted to the community deserves my 10$.
Thank you for all the work and good luck!
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. Maybe there could be a startup that helps people monetise their free software output?
THIS!!!
In open-source there is a huge difference between value generated and value collected. The people behind open-source projects are often clueless (sorry, but it's true) how to extract value from their work while keeping community happy. How about a service which helps authors monetize open-source software for some percentage?
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#249I 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…
Yes you can bet the farm that if he interviews at Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, Dropbox, etc. they will all whiteboard his ass (if he even gets an interview --because of his age). They don't give a f' who you are or what you did. In my google onsite they didn't even ask about past projects (who cares really?). The question is can you whiteboard?
The good thing about people who math often (which I presume he can since.. Octave) is that they can whiteboard.
Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave
#250This 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…
Maybe you're the one who can write a check, but this is a difficult topic...
I do corporate accounting for baroque software and I can write an invoice and pushing people to pay for it is still quite a sales challenge - you need to be able to talk to high enough people and prove the value of what you're offering on top of the software you are already giving for free. It's not different to a standard issue sales exercise, except a little harder. This is not a skill that most open source project maintainers would consider themselves experts at.
Giving advice like that is very dangerous - "only if you did that, you would make money". It's not a given that it would lead to something more than couple hundred dollars.