Re: Octave and cargo cult programmingHello

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 19 September 2012 01:50, Dan Muresan <address@hidden> wrote:
> 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.

Android was pretty much a Linux fork, and it's only relatively recent
that they merged back:

    
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/android-and-linux-re-merge-into-one-operating-system/10625

I don't know if you think a four-year fork to be a successful
long-term fork or not, though.

Forks happen all the time, though. ffmpeg forked into libav, Emacs
forked into Xemacs, XFree86 forked into Xorg, Redmine forked into
Chilimine. If you are more liberal with the meaning of "fork", every
project on Github and Bitbucket is a minor fork. I actually would be
very interested to see what an Octave fork would look like. Perhaps it
would combine Octave with Freemat? Freemat has taken some of Octave's
code, and we have taken some ideas from Freemat.

Really, if there is good enough reason to fork, and Sergiyko seems to
have that reason, go ahead and do the fork.

> In practice, I think that Octave is one of the better, more
> communicative and more responsive open-source projects.

Btw, Octave is not primarily open source, and the antonym of "free"
isn't "commercial" but "restricted" or "fettered". There are tentative
plans to keep Octave free but commercialise it more. If the next
ambitious major release gets in good shape, I think some of our users
will find good reason to pay for Octave.

> 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.

Criticism is great, bug reports better, and patches sublime, but
insults are none of these.

- Jordi G. H.