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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

#321

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…

People will complain about the code of conduct and again about their banning upon breaking a code of conduct. Managing a community takes a lot of time for something you're not getting paid for.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree. There should be funding bodies for projects like this who can fund projects and also provide a semblance of orchestration. The Linux Foundation (with the Core Infrastructure Initiative) and the Cloud Native Compute Foundation are already working in the right direction, imo. There are other organizations that work through contracting work to develop free and open source software. Red Hat and Canonical…

"There should be funding bodies for projects like this who can fund projects and also provide a semblance of orchestration. " A much better way than 'government funding' would be for users to just pay for it . It's called 'capitalism' it works very well. Oftentimes, it's difficult for the government and centralized bodies to know 'what to fund' and what not to - it's a hard thing, it can get political. Money goes ent…

It doesn't have to be "government" funding. Sometimes funding via traditional capitalistic sources (starting a company) just isn't the right model to fund something worthwhile. Think about low-level libraries... Also, the overhead of starting a company (or project-specific foundation) can be more inefficient than just running as a one-person shop. Maybe the author is really good at software, but bad at marketing.

Governments and other organizations rarely know 'what to fund'. But there is a good model that is already working in other fields - the grant process.

Why couldn't there be an umbrella organization (not gov't) that accepts donations on behalf of the community, and then has funds available to support open-source projects? There could be grants written, peer review, etc...

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#324

Earlier 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. Maybe there could be a startup that helps people monetise their free software output?

I don't know if this should be done by a for profit startup or should be done by foundations like the FSF.

This shouldn't be for-profit. It should be a non-profit granting foundation where projects could apply for grants based on merit and need. Let the foundation handle the paperwork and accept donations on behalf of everyone. Have a board of directors made up of well respected open-source names, and you'd be well on your way.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Oh, and because you've been such a tough-guy you only get to use malloc...once. In the main function

Oh yeah? How about I just don't use malloc then:

    static char ALLTHEFUCKINGMEMORY[1024*1024*1024];
    static size_t NEXTBYTE = 0;
    void *myAlloc(size_t size) {
        void *ptr = &ALLTHEFUCKINGMEMORY[NEXTBYTE];
        NEXTBYTE += size;
        if (size & 3) NEXTBYTE = (NEXTBYTE & (~3)) + 4;
        return ptr;
    }
    void myFree(void *ptr) {
        fprintf(stderr, "REAL PROGRAMMERS DON'T NEED TO FREE MEMORY\n");
        exit(-1);
    }

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a VAT number in most EU countries has a fixed cost that is non-negligible. For a realistic example in Italy, having a VAT number implies a minimal fixed yearly cost of ~300eur (combining all various expenses) even for zero income. If you already are an employee, any extra income is likely to be taxed higher and require extra bookkeeping, to the point that cost parity is only attained if you can invoice for at…

It's not worth if you're making less than 300eur per year. For any reasonable company (even a single founder one), 300eur is nothing

I don't think you understand the implication: there's no way to have a small, side passive income in the 0-10k range. This is a big stopper for many OSS developers that could bootstrap themselves.

With this limitation, many developers simply do not (and rightly so) put the effort in accepting anything in that ballpark because it's just extra work.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#327
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you point out, sufficiently good. But not great. I agree that the world is a better place with open source. I simply wish there was a culture were developers opened their wallet and supported it. That way we would have even more of it.

Then instead of bitching about the tools or the attitude of developers, which does nothing, why not work to encourage people to support it properly? For example: I think personal donations can only go so far. I'd rather see an easier sell for simple "support packages" that developers can recommend to their organization that helps further development. "We're really invested in package X and it'd be great to be listed…

> Then instead of bitching about the tools or the attitude of developers, which does nothing, why not work to encourage people to support it properly?

Perhaps because ggame is not a good marketer. I for example try to promote some ideas (unrelated to the topic here) all the time, but I am talking to a wall. Thus I'm surely not a good salesman, but a very good programmer and mathematician, I think. So don't ascribe double standard to ggame.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#328
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you point out, sufficiently good. But not great. I agree that the world is a better place with open source. I simply wish there was a culture were developers opened their wallet and supported it. That way we would have even more of it.

Then instead of bitching about the tools or the attitude of developers, which does nothing, why not work to encourage people to support it properly? For example: I think personal donations can only go so far. I'd rather see an easier sell for simple "support packages" that developers can recommend to their organization that helps further development. "We're really invested in package X and it'd be great to be listed…

None of the ideas you present are new to me. I've tried them all. I have many friends in the space who have tried them all as well. If anything worked we'd be the first to know.

"If it can be phased in a culturally acceptable way" - have you ever tried to intentionally change a culture? It's damn near impossible. Having it as a prerequisite to success practically guarantees failure.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#329
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a VAT number in most EU countries has a fixed cost that is non-negligible. For a realistic example in Italy, having a VAT number implies a minimal fixed yearly cost of ~300eur (combining all various expenses) even for zero income. If you already are an employee, any extra income is likely to be taxed higher and require extra bookkeeping, to the point that cost parity is only attained if you can invoice for at…

Some of those costs are general accountancy that you would have to do anyway, as long as you try to sell anything. AFAIK the big problem with VAT, from a seller perspective, is the fact that most governments, knowing full well that 90% of businesses fail in the first 2 years, ask for big upfront payments on estimate VAT remittances in that window, to make sure they don't lose out. After 3 years, as long as your accou…

At least in Italy, this is exactly the opposite. The first 5 years you are given a "relatively" easy start, giving you a false sense of the costs involved. After the 5 year mark, the costs suddenly becomes 5-7x, often making the company fail.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#330
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Selling software via a proprietary license to an enterprise can be bad for open source because it means that the enterprise doesn't need to obey the terms of the GPL. They are free to modify and adapt the code without contributing the changes back to the community, which kind of ruuing the point of the GPL in the first place. This method also only works if the copyright if fully owned by a single person or entity, wi…

>They are free to modify and adapt the code without contributing the changes back to the community, which kind of ruuing the point of the GPL in the first place.

As they are with the GPL so long as they don't distribute the modified code outside of the organization.

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