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Re: Octave and cargo cult programmingHello


From: Michael Goffioul
Subject: Re: Octave and cargo cult programmingHello
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 09:03:17 -0400

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 1:50 AM, Dan Muresan <address@hidden> wrote:
> 1) octave is not a monopoly, there are other alternatives available;
> moreover octave is GPL'ed, anybody is free to fork the code base and provide
> an alternate solution, as long as it is compatible with the GPL license

First of all, Octave has become what it is due to its virtues. I did
not mean "monopoly" as a negative term, but as a de-facto description.

As far as "you can always fork it", let's get real: once a project of
such force (user-wise and community-wise) is in place, the marginal
utility for any would-be dissenter is much, much smaller than the
incentives for joining in. I will change my opinion when I see a major
open-source project with a large active community (like Linux) forked
successfully for the  long term.

GCC was forked to become EGCS. This fork eventually became the regular GCC and the original GCC was abandoned. So, yes it's possible. It all depends on the people doing the fork.
 
What I said was that once you rise to a position of importance in the
software community (free or commercial though one may be) you have
some (moral) obligation to the user base. And I actually think Octave
acquits itself quite well of it.

Personally, I don't feel any obligation. I'm working on octave and trying to deliver quality software, because I want to. Not because I have to. In my paid job as a software developer, I deliver quality code, because I have to (and also because I want to).
 
> has exactly the opposite effect). My reasoning is actually very simple: if
> you think a piece of software is a steaming pile of crap and their
> developers are a bunch of idiots, why would you use it?

In this case (as in may other), criticism is a form of flattery. If
the software was that  bad, it would be ignored. It is criticized
precisely because it is widely used and people see some possible
improvements in various parts of it.

Positive criticism is always welcome. But this is not the case here. And you can also see that it's actually completely ignored by the main octave developers.

Michael.



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