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Re: Simulink for Octave


From: c.
Subject: Re: Simulink for Octave
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:18:58 +0200

On 19 Aug 2011, at 21:04, xavion wrote:

> Can't afford to invest in anything right now.  I will say that if the Octave
> organization
There is no such thing as an "Octave organization", 
it has been proposed to create one but it seems to be technically difficult. 

Octave is completely developed and maintained by individual volunteers.

Some of them accept to do custom developement if someone is willing to hire 
them for a specific task and pay for their time.

> distributed a Simulink-like capability with Octave for free,
> then offered other "toolboxes" for $50 to $100, I would purchase those
> toolboxes.  
Unfortunately, as far as I understand, it would be near impossible to collect 
that money at the moment.

> For example, an Excel-link would be beneficial
I think something (almost) like that already exists in the IO package of 
Octave-Forge:
http://octave.sourceforge.net/io/index.html

I know of at least one successful project where Excel was used as a GUI and 
Octave as a 
backend computational engine.

Scilab seems to have the feature you would like:
http://atoms.scilab.org/toolboxes/Scilab_XLL

>  - Excel is the ultimate GUI.  
Well, I'm not sure I agree, but I understand your point of view is
shared by many others

> Or perhaps a C autocode toolbox - hugely beneficial.
That has been attempted in the past with little success:
http://www.program-transformation.org/Octave/WebHome

Scilab seems to have that as an external module:
http://atoms.scilab.org/toolboxes/scilab2c/


> I believe than an open source & free Octave/Simulink with affordable
> "toolboxes" would take a huge bite out of Mathwork's bottom line. 
> Universities and companies could reduce (but not eliminate) their Mathworks
> overhead costs and reallocate those savings to more important ventures like
> research & development.
As far as I (and many others Octave users I know) am concerned, 
price is not the reason why I prefer to use Octave, but rather its being "free":
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

You also must understand that the number of people using Octave makes little 
difference to Octave developers, in particular none of the money that you state
universities and companies would save would go to Octave developers, so your 
argument
does not work to motivate them. Why would they want to spend THEIR time to save 
YOUR money?

What usually happens is that a feature ends up being added to Octave if someone 
who has
sufficient skills and time to implement it needs it for himself or is paid to 
do it.

Finally I see no reason why Octave developers would want to "take a bite out of 
Mathworks bottom line".
In my opinion Mathworks offers good products and, if you are OK with using 
proprieatry software,
it's also good value-for-money.

c.



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