Re: May I ask something about the governance of Octave?

[richard]

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 09:02:15AM -0400, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> On 26 May 2013 10:37, Ming Liu <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Is it possible for me to ask another question? I saw a lot of active
> > contributors are developing Octave, but they are not paid.
> > What attract them to put such a great effort in this software?
> 
> My own reason to work on Octave is that I think we deserve free
> software. We deserve to be able to share our work with each other
> without limitation, we should be able to study each other's
> algorithms, we should be able to reuse each other's work, and we
> should not be subject to the restrictions that Mathworks tries to
> impose on free scientific collaboration. Free science requires free
> software.
> 
> I work on Octave because it's the right thing to do. I have had
> non-free software imposed on me, and I don't want that to happen to
> anyone else.
> 
> - Jordi G. H.

I am a user rather than a developer, hence any contribution I make 
to octave is in pursuit of my other interests. However, I fully 
endorse this view of free collaboration. 

I would add that Copyright imposes defacto monopoly, and this, in 
turn, imposes costs that prevent incremental use and improvement of 
code. 
 
Richard A Lough