Re: The future of my involvement with the Octave project

[etienne]

  Hi John,

thank you very much for all the work you have put into Octave and
congratulations on the results; I know I have already written this a few
times, in the past 10 years, but it is worth being said once more.

  Now a silly question: will gifts made with the "funding" page of Octave
(http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/funding.html) be affected to Octave
development after Nov. 30th?

  Thanks once more,

  Etienne

On Tue, October 7, 2008 07:15, John W. Eaton wrote:
#
# For more than 16 years now, a large part of my job has been "work on
# Octave".  It's been a great experience and I would love for it to
# continue.  However, my employment has always been dependent on
# external grant funding and that has been harder to come by in the last
# few years.  As things stand now, funding for my position will end on
# November 30.  So unless something unexpected happens in the next month
# or two (perhaps there is a generous patron out there?) I'll be looking
# for a job, and I expect that my time available to work on Octave will
# be severely limited.
#
# What does this mean for the future of Octave?  That depends on what
# the members of the community decide to do.
#
# I think we have an amazing group of people working on Octave.  That
# most of you have done all of these great things working as volunteers
# in your spare time is even more incredible to me.  I'm very grateful
# for the things you are doing as it is unlikely that Octave would be
# where it is today without all the people who have contributed to
# Octave's development over the years.
#
# Octave is free software, so whatever happens it will not go away, and
# at this point the community is more than capable of keeping the
# project moving forward even without my work.  Although I plan to
# remain active in the community, I can't say for sure how much I will
# be able to do if I am forced to find another job.  But since that's a
# definite probability, I thought it would be best to provide some
# advance notice so that we might discuss possible solutions, and
# prepare for the changes that are likely to come.  That's one of the
# reasons that I've been trying to move more things to public servers
# (like savannah) so we can share the work more easily or others can
# take over without much trouble if that turns out to be necessary.
#
# Finally, if you have any ideas for ways to fund Octave development,
# I'd certainly like to discuss them.
#
# Thanks,
#
# jwe
#


-- 
http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt/~etienne