Re: Who uses Octave?

[Przemek Klosowski]

On 02/07/2012 12:29 PM, Julien Salort wrote:
> "John W. Eaton"<address@hidden>  writes:

> > You may think you are helping people by releasing this code, but I
> > would urge to you not do it and instead work to provide free software
> > drivers for the hardware.
>
> I do scientific research. To do this, I choose the acquisition card with
> the required datasheet. It  happens that National Instruments provides a
> free closed-source cross-platform library  to interface this card with a
> computer.
>
> I don't have  the knowledge nor the time  to reverse-engineer their card
> and write my own driver. End of story.

Understood-unfortunately many of us are in the same situation. John 
makes a point that a FOSS driver is preferable, both in general and 
specifically for working scientists--as you yourself said, the NI Linux 
driver is fragile and limits your choice of platforms, and that's on a 
good day, because on a bad day closed drivers just malfunction and leave 
you with no way to do anything about it.

NI used to publish full hardware specs and driver source for their 
products, so while their closed source Linux drivers are better than 
nothing, they made things worse for their customers. May I make a 
personal suggestion that you write your NI sales representative and 
mention that?