Re: GSoC 2015: Optimization Package: Non-linear and constrained least squares lsqcurvefit, lsqlin, lsqnonlin

[Julien Bect]

Le 25/02/2015 15:21, Olaf Till a écrit :
> I'm curious, what relation have these people to Matlab -- have they to 
> buy Matlab privately, are they students whose University can't give 
> them licenses, ... ? What do they do after rejecting Octave, pay for 
> Matlab? My experience is that people with free access to Matlab don't 
> think of adopting Octave anyway, except they are personally interested 
> in Free Software. That's no rethorical question only to object to you, 
> I'm really curious about the above.

Lots of different situations, difficult to answer. But yes, I agree with 
you about people having "free" (or perceived as such, because someone 
else is paying) access to Matlab.

Typically, think of a small lab or a team in a company that historivally 
has a few Matlab licences (and a few toolboxes), a more or less 
important Matlab code base, and wants to spend less on software licences.

They should naturally switch to Octave, since it's advertised to be 
"Matlab-compatible" and they have several people already familiar with 
the Matlab langage. But if they get the impression that their programs 
need to be modified to run under Octave, or that some of their favorite 
functions (say, fmincon) are actually missing from Octave, they will 
probably hesitate.

What to they do after that ? Well, they might still decide to give 
Octave a try (hurrah !), or decide to keep using their Matlab licences 
(so much for the savings...), or perhaps decide to (try to) switch to 
another langage (e.g., Python + Numpy, since they hear so much about it 
these days).

Just for the record: I have also recently helped a PhD student, with 
prior exposure to Matlab but no Matlab licence in his lab, to get 
started with Octave (under Linux). He was very happy with Octave and its 
new GUI, and found all the functions that he needed (mostly linear 
algebra) right there and working. I really think the new GUI, together 
with the Windows binaries, will attract a lot of people to Octave.