Re: octave presentation, part 2

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:12 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 19-Nov-2008, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
>
> | It is my understanding that Octave is both free software and open
> | source (the development model).
>
> As a part of the GNU project, we should try to avoid the term "open
> source" when referring to Octave.
>
> When I see the term "open source" I don't think of a development
> model.  I think of a marketing campaign started in the 90's to avoid
> talking about free software because there was some fear that talking
> about freedom and the goals of the free software movement would not
> appeal to business executives.  For more detail, you might read
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.
>

I think the situation is a bit different in our country - most people
(including people from academics) have only had little or no exposure
to the whole matter of open source & free software and, in fact, many
people don't even know there are such things as software licenses (and
software piracy is very common).
To put it another way, I think most (if not all) of the members of my
audience did not have any prejudices about neither term - they
consider these words to mean whatever I defined. Here I only wanted to
stress that the source of Octave is open for anyone to study, which I
think is very important especially for students.
The truth is that different wording, such as "completely accessible
source" and "partially accessible source" suits as well and carries no
stigma, so I'll use that.

> | True. I think I'll change that to "partly closed source".
>
> I still think it would be best to avoid the term "closed source" as
> well.
>

OK, see above.

> | This is already the second part of my talk - I stressed these points
> | enough in the first part (also posted to ML). This time I've been
> | specifically asked by some students to give somewhat detailed
> | comparison.
> | My first talk was packed with sentences like "help is wanted here".
> | The audience are teachers & students of numerical analysis, so I hope
> | to attract them for doing some projects, probably as Master or PhD
> | thesis.
>
> OK.
>
> Thanks,
>
> jwe
>

cheers

-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz