Re: some thoughts about the future of Octave

[Luis Alejandro Marquez Martinez]

João Cardoso wrote:

> While (numerical) code correctness is needed and a matter of concern, as
> previously stated by John Eaton some time ago about accepting and
> reviewing patches, "quality" is perhaps only meaningfull to computer
> scientists or programmers -- or does exists an ISO-xxx for assessing it?

ISO 9001 addresses this (more or less) and more software-specific
recommendations  are given in ISO 9000  part 3 : Quality Management
Systems.    In Europe exists the system TickIt (regulating organism in
London) which complements ISO 9001 for use with software developement.

The advantage of such approaches is that you obtain more clean, reliable
and easier to mantain/upgrade code.

> Numerical correctness, on the other side, puts an interesting question:
> who is competent to establish its correctness on others than everyday
> domains?

Maybe, when a well-mantained ftp site will exist,  it could have directories
like

ftp:///pub/.../octave/contrib/tested
ftp:///pub/.../octave/contrib/useatyourownrisk  ;-)





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