Re: octave-4.0.0-rc2 windows binary seems to be uploded

[John Frain]

On 26 March 2015 at 16:54, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, 2015-03-26 at 17:39 +0100, Giorgio De Nunzio wrote:
>> Moreover I am not paid by The Mathworks...
>
> The Mathworks of course hopes that by giving students easy access to
> Matlab, they will go on to demand more expensive licenses when they
> get jobs at bigger companies who can pay more.
>
And if you require to use a matlab toolbox there may be layers of
dependencies in the form of other toolboxes that you may have to
purchase. For example, if you wish to use the econometrics toolbox you
also have to purchase the Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox, the
Financial Toolbox, The Econometrics Toolbox and the Optimization
Toolbox. A standard licence for these products in Ireland costs €6850
+ cost of  upgrades when required. The corresponding license for an
academic ( single named user or on a single computer) is €1300. I
suspect that classroom use is very much cheaper but details are not
given on the Mathworks web site.

If students were more often introduced to Octave they would have a
knowledge of a package that they could use at any time. The skills
learned would also be of use if they ended up in a 'Matlab' house. In
my experience, students who learn Matlab often are unwilling to
consider any alternatives.  The work on the Octave GUI will make
Octave more accessible to many students - particularly those whose
horizons are limited to Windows.



> - Jordi G. H.
>
>
>
John C Frain, Ph.D.

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