On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 10:37 PM, Victor Salit
<address@hidden> wrote:
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?
Come on Shai, you are forgetting the fact that a company with 30 desktops is a tiny (may I say microscopic) company and in no way represents the real world. We also do R&D and manufacturing. At the location where I work we are more than 1200 people and this is not our only R&D center. Of course not all of the 1200+ are engineers and not all of the engineers need matlab/octave, but most of the engineers would find a proper use for these tools given an opportunity. And we are not the biggest company in our business area.
Are you seriously advocating that 20% of windows users need matlab/octave? I doubt if even 1% are engineers,and probably less then 10% have more than basic 12 years education- remember, for every engineering company like we work for, you have 100s of lawyer firms, accountants, flower shops, Mcdonalds restaurants, Garbage disposal firms, government offices, museums, and the list goes on .... Assuming windows even has 100% market share, what percentage of computer users need matlab? almost nobody.