Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

lists.gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 493 posts

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#151

Post by dannypgh »

koolba wrote: post #89
astrodust wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This story was fun to read but you lost me at the pass phrase with four numbers as words. That's clearly not dice ware!

65324 zero 44346 one 62245 two 61154 three 26252 four 25534 five 54225 six 53415 seven 24253 eight 43526 nine

Of course, if these were your dice rolls, you're pretty unlucky, and should try again. And/or buy a lottery ticket.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#152

Post by rabidrat »

brilliantcode wrote: post #139

> I would love to continue as the Octave BDFL but I also need to find a way to pay the bills. Breaks my heart to see such devoted developers having so much trouble paying bills for the work they've done. I truly believe that this problem can be solved-by crowdfunding open source developments that rivals commercial status quo, we can decouple ourselves from restrictive licensing structures while paying people's bills…

The "Subscribe to Updates" button on that page doesn't work. Also, above the "Full Name" field, it says "invalid".

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#153

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#154

Post by seagreen »

astrodust wrote: post #135
ggame wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python, PHP, and Ruby are not great languages. Google, Facebook, and Twitter are successful inspite of them. I'm not saying open source is bad, I'm saying Dev culture in not paying for tools is bad. I agree that ideally it would be different. I speak from decades of experience doing Dev tools inc open source. All of my friends are practitioners in the space. We're all obsessed on how to get people to use better tools…

> Python, PHP, and Ruby are not great languages. What high horse did you fall off of? They may not be perfect languages, but they get the job done, and for many people they've made their career possible. Greatness doesn't come from beauty, PHP is the ugly bastard-child produced when Perl and C got drunk one night and had a baby, it comes from utility . > I'm saying Dev culture in not paying for tools is bad. Maybe th…

> Then Linux happened, then scripting languages like Perl, Python and PHP proved themselves capable of getting the job done, and the modern web came about. This would never, ever have happened without those tools.

So Linux was so good . . . that it enabled a world where normal people don't use it, but instead use JS apps that store information on other people's servers? Because that's what I hear when you say Linux is a success because it enabled the web.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#155

Post by williamstein »

jordigh wrote: post #126
williamstein wrote: post #111

I added a slide about this to the talk I'm giving tomorrow on funding for open source math software at University of Rochester: http://wstein.org/talks/2017-02-09-wing-sage/slides.pdf

Thanks, Will. I hope things are working out for you too.

Thanks - definitely not yet, though I still have hope and feedback from customers is very good.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#156

Post by fsloth »

dheera wrote: post #150
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…

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,…

"Build something cool" is not sound financial advice for a person in a dire situation. The only reason it seems to work is because in the internet thousands are rolling the dice on this and you only hear of the few fraction of them who make it.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#157

Post by gkop »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #112
astrodust wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciation comes in many forms, like how many people have developed a new-found "appreciation" for the New York Times or the ACLU of late.

I think you're discounting donations to the ACLU that have only happened as of late because of an orange catalyst.

It seems like you two are saying the same thing.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#158

Post by lukaslalinsky »

supahfly_remix wrote: post #10

It seems that octave has been overtaken (in mindshare) by python/numpy. Why is that the case?

The scientific libraries for Python have gotten so good that Octave doesn't really have a chance, unless you are just interested in running some (old) MATLAB code and can't get MATLAB itself. This is really all about the libraries and frameworks, rather than the language. And with Jupyter notebooks you get a great UI which is something Octave never had.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#159

Post by mikekchar »

username223 wrote: post #101
tomphoolery wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gett…

> Patreon is awesome,... Is it? AFAICT, they take a 5% cut in exchange for setting up recurring billing. (I'll ignore any ethical questions about automatic recurring billing; I likely get free satellite radio because someone else forgot to cancel it.) Are there any stats about how readership/viewership translates into payment that are more informative than the PR department's "Average Pledge" of $5?

Wow. I had assumed (without looking) that Patreon took more than 5%. 5% is indeed awesome in my books. How much would it cost me to set that up myself (and deal with charge backs, etc, etc)? Specifically the cost of lost opportunity to do the work (and maintenance) necessary. 5% is "shut up and take my money" level for me. Having said that, you have a point about the automatic recurring billing thing...

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#160

Post by stephencanon »

mhermher wrote: post #72
samfisher83 wrote: post #42

Why can't a company like google just hire and let him work octave like 20% of the time. They can afford it.

Better yet, some consortium of universities. I've found that Matlab usage is probably like >90% academics. Wouldn't paying for contributions to Octave devs not save them money versus Matlab licenses?

Academic Matlab licenses are cheap. Hook 'em young, and they pay once they're out.
Post reply on HN