Sorry for trolling

[David Bateman]

Steven Verstoep wrote:
>   
> If Matlab did not existed, I would think your actions are very noble.  
> But the fact that octave clearly leaches on the user base and  
> familiarity with Matlab makes me question what exactly the benefit is  
> to the community? Octave does not try to be a better Matlab, just a  
> free one. When it is primarily created for the people who work on it,  
> does that in any way imply that people who not work on it should  
> morally not use it (Only take what you give)? Moreover since those  
> people are also likely to make use of the services Matlab provides on  
> their website like code exchange and user functions, do you then  
> consider giving anything back to Matlab?
>   
You have got to be kidding. You have no idea what you are talking about. 
I have used both Matlab and Octave for many years and strongly support 
Octave and its high compatibility with Matlab so that I can easily share 
code with colleagues that don't use Octave. I hardly see that makes 
Octave a "leach"..

Using your own argument right back at you,

<quote>

A bug in software will affect every user. If there is an imbalance between programmers and users the working-time wasted by the users will in the end cost more than the working-time saved by the having less programmers.

</quote>

How much code is written in the Matlab language that is not written by 
mathworks relative to the portion that is? I'd suggest the ratio is 
enormously in favour of the code written by the users.. Why shouldn't we 
the users write a concurrent software package to matlab to use that user 
generated code for matlab without the pain of dealing with mathworks 
(10k euro for initial license per seat with toolboxes, 3k per year 
maintenance, the horror of their license manager, awful support line to 
the point that a newsgroup is the primary means of matlab support).

The proportion of Octave users relative to those that might be 
considered as developers is probably 1/10000 given the numbers we have 
to hand.

> And about being a product. Treating octave as a product may improve  
> its quality. And maybe you are right that I mistake opensource with  
> being a product. In that case I am right in thinking that opensource  
> is not for me. And I will tell other people the same thing if they ask  
> me for my advice about using opensource or a commercial product.
>   
I have nearly 20 years of experience in industry as a professional 
engineer. Octave is a product, opensource or otherwise. What was 
objected to was your tone in reporting a bug. You think Matlab has no 
bugs? Some bugs I reported to them took nearly four years for them to 
getting round to fixing (try speye(3).^0 in an older version of 
matlab).. How long do you think it'll take this bug to be fixed in 
Octave ? I'll better the patch is applied tonight.

Read and understand

http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net/faq.html#utone

before you write a bug report to anyone ever again please. This pretty 
much applies to Octave as well.

> For you it might be just a bug. For me it is the end of using octave.  
> And that's not just because of this bug. Two months ago I actually  
> went to mathworks website and put Matlab in my shopping basket, when I  
> thought: "Oh wait let's see if there is an update of octave that  
> actually runs again on my mac; maybe it saves me some time". Indeed  
> there was that update. Now I just regret that I didn't buy Matlab.
>   
And when you come across a bug in Matlab you'll use an abacus?

> I today made this note, because I just couldn't  see the logic in it:
>
> x = columns
> y = rows
> [y x] = size(M)	# warning: [x y] makes sense
> M(y,x)			# warning: M(x,y) makes sense
>   
Apparently they haven't taught you the difference between row- and 
column-major matrix indexing in your courses yet. What language (other 
than matlab) do you know? I'd say its probably C or Java from your above 
assumption. For a mathematician the column-major indexing used in Octave 
and Matlab makes much more sense than that used in C.
> Nice guessing game: Let's see
> Since already 5 people responded in a fairly brief time, there might  
> be quite an active community
> So I am guessing at least 20 main contributors in the last year and at  
> least 3 project maintainers with weekly input. It is hard to say what  
> this effectively adds up to in terms of full time working time, but  
> I'm guessing something between 2 and 5.
> I guess Matlab's main team is about 10 active + 10 backup developers/ 
> testers, but I am guessing that Mathworks has about 100 employees  
> (also being quite international).
>   
Pretty much right for Octave though perhaps high, I'd say 10 to 15 
rather than 20. For mathworks however you ae way off. From the mathworks 
website

http://www.mathworks.com/company/aboutus/

they employ 2000 people, and I'd guess 10% of those at least are 
developers given that mathworks is a software company. So you expect 10 
to 15 un-paid part time developers to do the same job for 200 paid full 
time developers?

D.

> Steven
>
>
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>
>   


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David Bateman                                dbateman at dbateman.org
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