Re: Woctave-another gui front end

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith]

On 12/20/12 11:47, Francesco Potortì wrote:
> > Frankly, Octave is a beautiful piece of work, but  it suffers from
> > the Open Source mentality that you need to earn what you use.
>
> No, it suffers from the fact that no one has done it yet.  As soon as
> someone is motivated enough (e.g. by paying them), it will be done...

I thought that Eric Raymond's characterization of what motivates people 
to write open-source (or free) software was very good: "Every good work 
of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar

But let me also say this.  Open source (or free) software is what it is, 
and you take it for what it is.  I personally really love developing 
software in a unix environment, and octave is one of those really good 
tools that I have the freedom to use.  I personally don't feel I have to 
earn the right to use the software, but I can appreciate that unpaid 
software developers will develop the software that works well in the 
environment that they like to use.  People are willing to generously 
share the fruits of their labors with others, but take the gift as just 
that - a gift.  There should be no strings attached, either on the part 
of the giver, or the recipient.

Of course if your goal is to "take over the world" - perhaps persuade 
Matlab users that they should quit using Matlab and use octave instead - 
well then you have taken upon yourself a difficult task, and I'll not be 
joining your cause.

And by the way, what is this difference between "open source" and 
"free"?  I'm not motivated enough to search around the mailing list 
archives to find out, but if someone wants to reply to this email and 
explain it yet again, I will make the effort and read the reply.

Stephen