Re: The future of Octave

[Rafael Laboissiere]

On Fri, Dec 08, 2000 at 11:06:25AM -0600, John W. Eaton wrote:

> The `non-matlab-compatible' branch would presumably be innovating, and not
> standing still.  It is likely that some of the innovations would then be
> duplicated in incompatible ways by the next release of Matlab. When there
> is overlap like this, you lose, because (assuming that compatibility is a
> critically important goal) it means that you either have to break
> compatibility with previous versions of the `non-matlab-compatible' branch,
> or you have to assume the burden of maintaining two incompatible ways of
> doing the same thing.  This has happened in the past, and I expect it would
> happen again.

Okay, your point is very well made.  I would guess that everybody
participating to this discussion already understood that  it is essential
for you to abandon the Matlab compatibility goal for the "new generation"
numerical software.

Now, you already gave us a taste of your future plans, so please make them
more explicit, give us some more details.  I will go with you.

-- 
Rafael (who finally understood that Matlab compatibility is a Bad Thing)



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