Octave review

[Daniel J Sebald]

Jaroslav Hajek wrote:

>>I understand
>>the forces and influence of big government, big corporations, imperialism,
>>etc.  If less industrialized companies want to "catch up", as they should,
>>then their governments should write their laws to encourage that (have some
>>respect for the natural environment, of course) rather than thwart it.
> 
> 
> Nah, I don't think it's that easy. We can't just make copyright void
> by law, for example - we'd be facing penalties from everywhere. You
> have to play by the rules, or risk isolation...

I didn't intend to imply void copyright laws, but point taken.  Every government has plenty of trade laws and they can be written to encourage development from business within its borders.  In the U.S., individual states do that sort of thing.


> I think you made a good point in that Octave makes it possible to
> enter the world of scientific computing without the need to pay in
> advance for the privilege (or use pirate copies). But the primary
> point is that Octave, as free software, grants everyone the  freedom
> to study, understand and modify - these are essential for innovation.
> Octave encourages everyone to improve it, while Matlab's EULA in fact
> deems it a possibly criminal act if you create an improvement of one
> of its functions, for instance.
> That's why Octave actually plays a different league than Matlab; even
> if it were worse in all functional aspects (which it is far from), it
> would still be more free.

Well said.

Dan