Octave presentation

[David Bateman]

Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 10:09 AM, David Bateman
> <David.Bateman at motorola.com> wrote:
>   
>> Julius Smith wrote:
>>     
>>> At 06:13 PM 11/4/2008, David Bateman wrote:
>>>       
>>>> I'll believe the R/S vs Octave/Matlab thing when Cleve Moler contributes
>>>> to Octave..
>>>>         
>>> That would be unlikely at this point since Cleve Moler is "chairman
>>> and chief scientist" at The Mathworks:
>>> <http://www.mathworks.com/company/aboutus/founders/clevemoler.html>
>>>       
>> That was kind of my point.. The founder of S is a contributor to R and
>> the same can't be said for Matlab/Octave.
>>
>>     
>
> Yes, we have a tougher position :) I sometimes wonder whether
> Mathworks views Octave as a competition.
> I guess not. Yet, at the same time, my intended talk about Octave at
> the TCP'08 conference in Prague (organized by local Matlab reseller
> and quite Matlab-centric) has been disapproved by the international
> comittee, of which C. Moler is a chairman. (The organizer's reply
> seemed to carry a tone of surprise, suggesting that not approving a
> contribution is not really common). Yes they offered me a poster
> session but I don't have time for making posters now. Anyway, next
> year I'm going to try again just for the fun of it.
>
> cheer
Octave inevitably is competition Mathworks... They choose to ignore 
Octave for now with the specious argument that experience with octave 
prepares the user for a much better experience with Matlab.... Sure that 
might be true now (though less and less true as time goes on), once the 
users themselves realize their own contributions make Octave better a 
certain point will pass that Octave will be "good enough" for a larger 
and larger group of users, and that momentum will make the improvement 
in Octave exponential.. We are really getting to that point now in my 
opinion, and so soon Mathworks won't be able to ignore Octave. I'd say 
their reaction, based on past experience might be something like their 
lawsuits against COMSOL. That is

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/case_no-6:2006cv00334/case_id-97908/ 


for the patent case and

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/case_no-6:2006cv00335/case_id-97909/ 


for the copyright case. Though who they can sue will be interesting to 
see and the backlash against a company that tries to sue volonteers 
contributing to the public good without profit for themselves will be 
interesting to see as well.


-- 
David Bateman                                David.Bateman at motorola.com
Motorola Labs - Paris                        +33 1 69 35 48 04 (Ph) 
Parc Les Algorithmes, Commune de St Aubin    +33 6 72 01 06 33 (Mob) 
91193 Gif-Sur-Yvette FRANCE                  +33 1 69 35 77 01 (Fax) 

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