Re: Octave's goals and motivations (Re: GUI)

[Shai Ayal]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Victor Salit <address@hidden> wrote:

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Carnë Draug <address@hidden> wrote:

On 29 September 2011 13:09, Victor Salit <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Carnë Draug <address@hidden>
> wrote:
>>
>> 2011/9/29 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:
>> > On 28 September 2011 18:40, tilas <address@hidden> wrote:
>> >> 2. consider this simple fact of life: between 80%-90% of all
>> >> desktops are windows vs about 1%-5% linux
>> > [...] Most
>> > of the world's computers use Windows. But that doesn't mean we should
>> > accept any of these facts of life nor not attempt to improve them.
>>
>> Just would like to point out that the group 'all desktops' is of no
>> interest. The group 'desktops of people who have a use for octave'
>> maybe is and I'm guessing the 2 linux/windows populations in that
>> group will be very different.
>>
>> Carnë
>
> Are you seriously claiming that windows users have no use for octave? Did I
> get your point right? Can you substantiate this claim? (Hint: independent
> statistics/research)

No. I'm claiming that the two things (number of desktops and number of
desktops of people who have a use for octave) are different

agree

 

and you
can't substantiate your previous claim with the numbers on the
wikipedia page (which refer to the first group).

disagree: 

Let's take the most unfavorable number for the windows from that table - 80% and the most favorable for Linux - 5% of the total market.

Now you say - not every computer user needs or have a use for Octave. Agree. You also say that of those using Linux, there are more users needing Octave than of those using Windows. Let's for the sake of example say that 90% of Linux users have use for Octave as opposed to only 20% (low enough?) of Windows users. Some math now:

0.05x0.9=0.045 < 0.8*0.2=0.16

I disagree with your 20% windows number. maybe 0.2%. You are forgetting the fact that octave/matlab is a highly technical and specialized product. It's vary rare. Just as an example, I work in company doing R&D and manufacturing, and of the 30 desktops one is linux, the other are windows. Only 3 people use octave. And this is in a technology company. What percentage of lawyer firm's windows desktops need octave/matlab? How many netbooks users (with windows installed) need octave/matlab?

Shai

p.s. asides from this argument about number of users, the simple fact is that the active contributors don't use windows and dont; develop for windows. As an open source project, octave goes in the direction that the contributors set -- that's life. If you want octave to go in some direction, there are 2 ways: contribute and/or pay someone to do it. You can't force contributors who do this for fun to something which is not fun for them ...