Re: Looking for Work after 25 Years of Octave

[Rik]

On 02/08/2017 04:24 PM, address@hidden wrote:

Subject:

Looking for Work after 25 Years of Octave

From:

"John W. Eaton" <address@hidden>

Date:

02/08/2017 12:20 PM

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Octave Maintainers Mailing List <address@hidden>

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TL;DR:  Reflecting on the last 25 of Octave, it's been a great
experience.  I would love to continue as the Octave BDFL but I also
need to find a way to pay the bills.

Octave friends, developers, and occasional users,

This is serious.  We owe John a lot for starting this project so many years ago, and for being the Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL) that he is. If you have been to an Octave Conference, you will have heard him say that the median number of developers for a community-supported software project is 1.  In other words, most projects never expand beyond the original author, and after a few months or years the updates stop and the project dies.  That has not happened under John's watch.  Instead, Octave has grown, attracted more coders, implemented a GUI, and is now holding conferences internationally.

Solving a problem by yourself is hard, but solving a problem together is easy.  The Octave Community needs to work together to come up with something that allows John to continue doing what he does best: coding and leading Octave.

In addition to the suggestions he wrote, I think users should check with their employers to see if there is any IT budget for software maintenance.  Octave is a ridiculously good value, even if they have to pay something for it.

--Rik