
Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave - dhuramas
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-octave/2017-02/msg00062.html
======
sandGorgon
This post today is what is wrong with open source software. If someone knows
jwe, then they should tell him that lots of corporates and startups WANT to
support stuff like this.

But you cannot give a paypal link and expect donations. As a company, I cant
do that. I need an invoice. Hell, if you can get a business account, I daresay
you will get subscriptions.

I like to call this "gratitude-ware".

Check out Sidekiq Pro and their experience making 80k USD per month.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12925449](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12925449)

 _At first I built Sidekiq as an LGPL project and sold commercial licenses for
$50. Revenue was laughably small, but the response I got was encouraging:
people told me they were saving $thousands /mo over previous solutions and
wanted to buy the license just to give me something as thanks._

Octave currently offers support packages for which you have to write in to the
maintainer and have an email discussion. Compare that with Sidekiq :
[http://sidekiq.org/products/pro](http://sidekiq.org/products/pro)

Its one of the best designed gratitude-ware page...even works amazingly well
on a mobile phone.

We personally also buy pfsense licenses [https://www.pfsense.org/our-
services/gold-membership.html](https://www.pfsense.org/our-services/gold-
membership.html)

TL;Dr Donations wont work. Engineers cant give an excuse to corporate
accounting. Make a pro subscription with ANY "pro level" feature. I can get my
accounting to sign off. And no "contact us to find out about support
contract".

~~~
fsloth
My heart breaks each time I discover a free tool of recognition is developed
by some altruistic talent who lives at a near poverty level while their work
generates millions in added value.

I suppose the simplest way would be to offer dual licensing. GPL for non-
profit projects, proprietary for enterprises. The problem is, if the source
code you are working on depends on third party GPL software it's very hard to
do that.

I think this is what should be fixed. There should be some way to have a chain
of dual licensing, so that if someone uses a dual-licensed library, they can
forward revenues simply to the original license owner from their proprietary
license sales.

Source remains open, and developers can eat (and pay for other amenities
civilization has to offer).

Blockchains?

~~~
cabalamat
> My heart breaks each time I discover a free tool of recognition is developed
> by some altruistic talent who lives at a near poverty level while their work
> generates millions in added value.

Maybe there could be a startup that helps people monetise their free software
output?

~~~
sandGorgon
+100

this is a YC-fundable startup. Here are the projects I can think of:

1\. Celery - jeez. It runs half the world's high availability python software,
yet has severe funding crunch.

2\. Octave - obviously

3\. Jupyter+Pandas - [http://jupyter.org/](http://jupyter.org/)

4\. Vue.js - [http://vuejs.org/support-vuejs/](http://vuejs.org/support-
vuejs/)

~~~
stillsut
Here's how to do it: combine dev-bootcamps with FSF.

People already pay big bucks to learn how to code, use that to fund the senior
devs, the junior devs gain the experience they need to change their career
trajectory.

This guy should not have been the director and doing the majority of the
legwork for 25 years! He needs to be put in a position to get an awesome job
at either classic big tech corporate, then some high prestige research unit.
And there should be an understudy in the queue set to take over the work, and
eventually earn his reward in the afterlife.

------
vcistan-inmate
I don't understand how YC can fund non-profits like VotePlz and the ACLU while
not funding stuff like this. All of the startups funded by VCs use free
software, often exclusively, but these VCs continue to refuse to adequately
fund its development. Marc Andreessen even publicly boasted about how much OSS
his companies use[1], which he of course doesn't pay for.

I also shudder to think of how Eaton will fare on the job market should he
actually be forced to seek regular employment. Will he be whiteboarded? Will
his work on Octave--which by all rights should be able to serve as a strong-
enough resume by itself to justify his hiring--even be looked at by potential
employers? And what about his age? 25 years on Octave could mean he's pushing
50. I could easily see him getting a "no hire" from plenty of trendy tech
companies.

[1]
[http://www.businessinsider.com/boxnet-2011-9](http://www.businessinsider.com/boxnet-2011-9)

~~~
toephu2
Yes you can bet the farm that if he interviews at Google, Facebook, Uber,
Amazon, Dropbox, etc. they will all whiteboard his ass (if he even gets an
interview --because of his age). They don't give a f' who you are or what you
did. In my google onsite they didn't even ask about past projects (who cares
really?). The question is can you whiteboard?

~~~
santaclaus
> They don't give a f' who you are or what you did.

I know a few people who Google has hired into specific roles directly due to
their previous work...

~~~
petters
What she or he said is mostly true, though. But there are always exceptions.

------
yazaddaruvala
This is not a scalable model of software funding. People may send you money
today, because its on their minds, but bills will have to be paid again next
month, and next year. Please get yourself, a Patreon account, or something
similar.

Meanwhile, I'm sure MathWorks is looking for people with exactly your domain
knowledge[0].

[https://www.mathworks.com/company/jobs/opportunities/?s_tid=...](https://www.mathworks.com/company/jobs/opportunities/?s_tid=hp_ff_a_careers)

~~~
bravura
Would you donate a recurring amount monthly to open-source software
development?

Imagine a site that auto-bills your credit card every month. You can specify
projects you want to support, or just support a portfolio of projects that
someone else has devised.

If so, please fill out this quick survey. I'm curious if this idea has legs:

[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfXIqUqsfDoUplWeWYs...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfXIqUqsfDoUplWeWYsxdmW04G2gQ1tO5o179fu5Eom75tohg/viewform)

~~~
dflock
You mean like this:
[https://salt.bountysource.com/](https://salt.bountysource.com/)

Obviously, there are also lots of open source people earning income from
Patreon and the traditional bountysource too - but salt is the Bountysource
clone of Patreon, specifically for OSS.

~~~
nathancahill
The idea is a good one. But see how none of the projects break $3k/month? And
how drastically it drops down to $500? There just isn't that much money moving
in that model. Period.

The Open Collective project mentioned in your sibling looks even nicer, but
tops out at $5k/year.

~~~
dflock
It's not the model, it's the audience size.

These guys are making $24k per month on Patreon, for example:
[https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt](https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt) \- I
would guess it's just a function of their audience size and the amount of work
they put into fundraising - actually _asking_ people to contribute.

ElementaryOS have actually been working at this a little bit (unlike almost
all other open source projects) - and they've built up to $1k a month on
Patreon:
[https://www.patreon.com/elementary](https://www.patreon.com/elementary) \-
plus ~$200 a month on salt/bountysource, plus direct donations, etc...

------
plinkplonk
You might want to check with the Julia folks. They now have a company (Julia
Computing) backing the project. I don't know if they are hiring right now, and
if so, whether you'd be a good fit, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

Might be a better alternative to working for MathWorks! Julia is an open
source project with many brilliant developers and mathematicians contributing.

[http://juliacomputing.com/](http://juliacomputing.com/)

I don't see a 'jobs' page, but CEO Viral Shah (and everyone else, but Viral is
who I know) is on twitter, and is a great guy.

[https://twitter.com/Viral_B_Shah](https://twitter.com/Viral_B_Shah)

~~~
spangry
This is great (and practical) advice. I hope the Octave BDFL reads it.
Continuum Analytics might be another good fit, given a decent amount of ML
work coming out of academia is in the form of a matlab file.

I'm not sure if by 'partner' they mean 'people we give money/people who give
us money', but it costs nothing to ask:
[https://www.continuum.io/partners](https://www.continuum.io/partners)

------
anigbrowl
There's something fundamentally broken about the open-source model when you
can invest so much time and npt get any sort of economic return. This seems
like a huge limiting factor on open-source development. As I've pointed out in
discussions on copyright issues, artists value copyright because the patronage
model _sucked_ \- you're essentially dependent on people's charity and having
to beg just to maintain basic economic security is inefficient, demoralizing,
and unreliable.

I think services like Patreon etc. are quite worthy but they're also
dysfunctional. Nobody has solved the micro-payment problem yet and it seems
like people have just given up trying. In a saner world this person would be
rewarded for the enormous technical contribution with a reliable pension of
some sort to remove the distraction of financial anxiety.

~~~
Swizec
> There's something fundamentally broken about the open-source model when you
> can invest so much time and npt get any sort of economic return. This seems
> like a huge limiting factor on open-source development.

The problem we have is that OSS creators don't realize, and often willfully
ignore, the fact that nothing about opensource says you can't charge for
delivering value to people. Sure, their ability to copy it themselves and do
stuff might reduce your leverage, but I can almost promise you that a company
which generates $10,000,000/year of revenue and relies on your software, will
throw money at you if you ask. Especially if you say something like "You know,
since you're not paying me for this, I can totally stop maintaining it at any
point and then you'll be fucked because your business relies on this".

But many engineers don't like to be business people. So here we all are.

It's really not that hard: Do people's livelihoods and businesses rely on your
work? Are you improving people's lives? Charge.

Doing it for fun and no interest in making a business? That's fine, but don't
expect to make a living off of a thing you're not charging money for.

~~~
anigbrowl
I think this is maybe a reaction to the way AT&T made Unix so expensive and
inaccessible to hackers for so long that the idea of charging $$$ for
something whose marginal cost of production was effectively $0 that the idea
of charging money was morally repulsive to a lot of key figures in the
movement.

In a way OSS seems like the sort of thing that would have worked great in some
hypothetical enlightened communist system that didn't suppress liberty.

~~~
pjmlp
> AT&T made Unix so expensive and inaccessible to hacker

Actually you got it wrong, it was precisely because AT&T could not legally
charge the prices other vendors were selling their OSes, that UNIX got adopted
by universities and small business, thus spreading its use in the industry.

The ones charging lots of money for UNIX clones were Sun, HP, Digital, HP, ...

~~~
anigbrowl
I thought sun was in partnership with AT&T when system V came out, and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix)
appears to support that idea, but my first-hand memories have dimmed with time
(cause it's not something I care about that much) and you may well be right.

I do remember, um, liberating an overlooked copy of system V/386 on 5.25"
floppies that I found in a storage cupboard when I worked at PC Magazine in
1992 :-)

~~~
pjmlp
If you have some time to refresh memory.

"A Narrative History of BSD by Dr. Kirk McKusick"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds77e3aO9nA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds77e3aO9nA)

"Unix came into many CS departments largely because it was the only powerful
interactive system that could run on the sort of hardware (PDP-11s) that
universities could afford in the mid '70s. In addition, Unix itself was also
very inexpensive. Since source code was provided, it was a system that could
be shaped to the requirements of a particular installation."

[http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/frs122/unixhist/chen.htm](http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/frs122/unixhist/chen.htm)

~~~
anigbrowl
Thanks, this looks enjoyable and informative.

------
JoelJacobson
$5,000 (will be) donated.

Tried to use PayPal. A Top Up to my PayPal account via Instant Bank Transfer
worked fine, but when I tried to use the money by making a transfer to The
Octave Guy, PayPal said my account had been frozen :-(

I have emailed the author and requested bank details in order to make a
regular bank transfer instead.

~~~
zapu
I think you will only need to provide additional verification for PayPal and
you'll be good to go. They need to do it because of anti money laundering laws
- at least here in Europe, but it's probably similar in US.

------
hakcermani
I beseech every Andrew Ngs ML course student to contribute a little. I just
did.

~~~
paintnp
Thanks for reminding about Andrew's course. Had to contribute after that :)

------
antirez
Is it just my feeling/bias or projects under the GNU umbrella suffer the
problem of not putting the developers at the center of the project enough? One
of the things you should get back from doing something like Octave, is to be
recognized at least in certain parts of the software community. When an OSS
project is a GNU project maybe it is less likely to get the deserved credits,
that later may lead to positions, donations, or whatever, compared to having a
project on Github, regularly writing to a blog, and so forth. So, without
trying to ignore the _fundamental_ problem of a lot of work important for the
society that does not compensates the developers as it should, maybe OSS
developers need to get smart and try to put themselves at the center of their
projects in order to get the visibility that later may save their careers.

~~~
anewhnaccount
I agree that being under the GNU isn't necessarily good for projects. Look at
[https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=octave](https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=octave)
for example. Many of these patches have in fact been merged, but nobody really
knows how to use this bug tracker. Actually editing the wiki requires asking
on IRC. See here:
[https://octave.sourceforge.io/](https://octave.sourceforge.io/)

Octave should have a steady stream of students who have been made to use
Matlab trying to use it instead. If the barriers were lower these people might
get hooked on contributing. As it is, I imagine they take one look and think
"old and busted". I don't think it's necessary to use Github, but the
development tools should be something people can use frictionlessly, which
isn't the case now.

------
petercooper
At the risk of comparing apples to boulder sized oranges, it's a shame
considering Wolfram supports hundreds of employees off of Mathematica alone
(something that wows my mind - in a good way - every time I'm reminded of it).
I hope this drive works but also the long term prospects.

------
saganus
Sometimes I dream that if I ever become very wealthy (either because of
something I created or because I won the lottery) I would go around and donate
some nice money to these under-appreciated developers/organizations/projects.

I mean, if I had billions, wouldn't it be feasible to spend say 1M or even
0.5M to say, 100 projects? 200 maybe?

Does this not happen or do we just not hear about it if it ever happens?

~~~
brianwawok
Most people would rather save 1,000 people from Malaria in Africa than give 1
white college educated man living in one of the richest counties on earth a
year's salary to write code from his home office.

(I am sure it happens, but I am sure that it is pretty low on the donation
list)

~~~
bzbarsky
For what it's worth,
[http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ins...](http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/insecticide-
treated-nets#HowcosteffectiveisLLINdistribution) estimates about $3000 per
life saved (which I will grant is not the same thing as "malaria case
prevented"). So a year's salary for a good developer would be on the order of
30-150 lives saved, depending on market and definition of "good"...

Agreed with your overall point, though.

~~~
dragandj
The cost of one Matlab license could save a human life, by such accounting.

~~~
brianwawok
Or every time you buy a new car instead of a used car, you kill 1-2 starving
people somewhere.

Such math is hard...

------
dhuramas
If you think GNU Octave has made a difference in your life or other's, please
take a moment to continue funding his efforts.
[http://jweaton.org/?page_id=48](http://jweaton.org/?page_id=48)

~~~
vmarsy
you can also donate via the Free software foundation, I'm not sure what the
author prefers, but the FSF donation can most likely be matched 100% if your
company participates in a matching program.

Hopefully, adding a "for 'GNU Octave' project" note should be enough.

~~~
davexunit
There's a specific donation page for Octave.

[https://my.fsf.org/donate/working-
together/octave](https://my.fsf.org/donate/working-together/octave)

Using the regular donation page with a note will just complicate the lives of
the FSF staff.

~~~
dopeboy
Thanks for posting this link davexunit. Just donated $100. I used Octave in
undergrad for some engineering classes. This doesn't solve the long term
problem for the author but I hope it provides some temporary relief.

------
hughw
While recruiting at UT Austin petroleum engineering school recently, I was
impressed how embedded Matlab has become there. The students use Matlab for
big semester projects and everyday scratchpad computation. I believe it's a
required skill. I don't know the licensing arrangement Mathworks made with
them. It's common for software companies to donate licenses to engineering and
science departments. It's a loss leader, and presumably lots of the students
will pull Matlab licenses into their employers later. But Matlab is so
ubiquitous there, and so integrated into the curriculum, it could be that
money did change hands.

I wonder if there's an opening along those line for a revenue stream for
Octave?

~~~
hkmurakami
Iirc student licenses are ~$100, and full licenses are ~$2500, with
$1000-$1500 for additional libraries.

I wonder if schools pay $0, $100, or somewhere around $300-$500.

~~~
BeetleB
My university had only student licenses.

------
vijayr
This is probably just wishful thinking, but I wish I had enough money to buy a
decently large property and just let people stay there (everything free,
including food/stay/healthcare etc) and work on projects like these, for as
long as they want. Tech has so many rich people, I dunno why this can't be
done. Even if it is just 100 high caliber people staying/working in such a
community, they can generate immense value for all of humanity.

~~~
splitbrain
That's a nice idea. But Open Source authors have lives too. Friends, Family,
etc. as much as I'd like to live rent free, I wouldn't want to move into a
"camp" for Open Source authors.

~~~
vijayr
If someone has enough money, they can lease/buy an entire building (say a 50
apt building in NYC, Seattle or wherever) and let people live in those
apartments (for $1/month in rent or something like that). This doesn't need to
be a camp or tents in some remote place. This way people can live in those
apartments with their families. In cities like NYC, rent is most normal
people's biggest expense.

All it takes is just one rich person (there are many in tech) who believes in
the idea (or some variation of it) and it can be done.

That said, I was mostly thinking of young/single people when I wrote it.
People with kids have more challenges

------
andyjohnson0
It is interesting to contrast this with esr's recent announcement "In which,
alas, I must rattle a tin cup" [1].

[1]
[http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7348#more-7348](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7348#more-7348)

~~~
danaliv
I was tempted to post the same thing. ESR points fingers, talks about how
bloody _important_ he is, and scoffs at the idea of getting a job like the
rest of us. JWE faces facts, asks people to make their own judgment, and talks
of getting a job in a tone that isn't snobbish.

------
sytelus
Some ideas for OP:

\- Evangelize Octave in education, especially K-12. Community for Octave is
rather small and K-12 education has lots of potential users and money.

\- Apply for NSF grants

\- Create specialized plugins that people might want to pay for commercial
usage. Think of it as your consulting gig.

\- Write book not on just using Octave but something more generic like fun
with math that can have larger audience.

\- Create an edition like Octave Gold for $5 which has zero feature
differences but has some cool logo or chrome or fun cosmetic thing. You will
be surprised how many people want to pay for it.

~~~
palerdot
There a lot of variations of octave gold which can be applied to the product.
I have not used octave and don't know whether the following applies to it -
like a "tip from the author" in the GUI, custom themes etc.

------
mooreds
For those of us not in the know, GNU Octave is, according to Wikipedia,
"software featuring a high-level programming language, primarily intended for
numerical computations."

~~~
iamed2
More specifically, it's designed to support as much as possible of MATLAB's
syntax to provide an open-source alternative to MATLAB.

------
n00b101
Meanwhile, MathWorks annual revenue is over $800 million.

~~~
pm90
Honest question: what exactly do you hope to put light on with that
comparison? I don't think the developer in question has ever claimed that he
is a fantastic businessman: quite the contrary, he is (apparently) a very
talented developer who is seeking funding to continue a project which others
may find useful.

I understand that the current economic system in the US greatly favors forming
a business around a good idea/software, but we shouldn't be closed to other
models of software development as well.

~~~
n00b101
Octave is a clone of MATLAB, which is MathWorks' flagship product. They have
identical programming languages and similar libraries. MATLAB's initial
release was in 1984, and Octave's was in 1988. So there is a direct comparison
in terms of product features, target market and development period. A critical
difference is that one is closed-source commercial product and the other is an
open source GNU project. The huge difference in success makes for an
interesting comparison of these two models of software development. It reminds
me of an essay by an a16z partner about "Why there will never be another Red
Hat" [1]

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/13/please-dont-tell-me-you-
wa...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/13/please-dont-tell-me-you-want-to-be-
the-next-red-hat/)

~~~
beambot
"Similar libraries"? Hardly. There is no comparison with the _toolboxes_ ,
which is where most of the domain-specific value lies with MathWorks.

~~~
jordigh
Some toolboxes are quite comparable. The signal processing, image, and control
packages in Octave, for example.

------
samfisher83
Why can't a company like google just hire and let him work octave like 20% of
the time. They can afford it.

~~~
mhermher
Better yet, some consortium of universities. I've found that Matlab usage is
probably like >90% academics.

Wouldn't paying for contributions to Octave devs not save them money versus
Matlab licenses?

~~~
stephencanon
Academic Matlab licenses are cheap. Hook 'em young, and they pay once they're
out.

------
supahfly_remix
It seems that octave has been overtaken (in mindshare) by python/numpy. Why is
that the case?

~~~
Jach
Did Octave ever have a larger mindshare? It always seemed like the
cheapskate's Matlab substitute, but if you know enough Matlab where you might
consider a substitute, you probably have a Matlab license already. (Or like me
a need to run on an embedded Linux while you work on a python port + a
distaste for proprietary software...)

Anyway, my thought on why numpy seems more widespread is simple: efficiency.

Even Matlab code gets rewritten if it needs to be used for something intense,
and Matlab has many more optimizations than Octave to get away with sloppy
coding. Python+numpy is pretty easy even for a non-programmer to write (at
least compared to C++ or whatever a DSP wants you to use) and even sloppily
done is generally fast, plus it has a great and large community. But both
Matlab and Octave are great (at least if you use octave-forge) for prototyping
and doing a lot of domain specific things python/numpy/scipy don't support out
of the box. Matlab especially has a lot of neat GUI helper tools. Meanwhile R
is over in its own world where if you're doing anything in that domain it's a
questionable choice not to take advantage.

~~~
wenc
The problem with Octave for most of its life was it never had a very good GUI,
and that made it hard for university departments to adopt as course software.
I know we tried to push Octave in our department, but it just never took off.
That, plus the Mathworks offered some pretty good educational pricing.

Octave also never had the span of toolboxes that MATLAB had. With MATLAB, you
could always find fairly usable toolboxes that covered most engineering
computation needs.

Octave was on par with MATLAB on some fronts, but it rarely exceeded MATLAB
capabilities. And it was worse than MATLAB on tooling maturity. People hate
The Mathworks for charging an arm and leg for its software, and for breaking
backward compatibility, but most people will admit the MATLAB environment is
pretty polished and seamless compared to open-source offerings in the same
space.

So far no one has mentioned Scilab
([http://www.scilab.org/](http://www.scilab.org/)). Scilab is a much a better
MATLAB alternative than Octave, though Scilab code is less compatible with
MATLAB that Octave code.

~~~
HerraBRE
Something you didn't mention, which I suspect is a major factor in why
promoting FOSS alternatives proves surprisingly difficult in education.

I remember when I was in university students were acutely aware that tools
like PhotoShop, Microsoft* and MATLAB were used in businesses. I doubt this
has changed.

Even if superior Free options had been available, many of them would still
have opted for the "safe" proprietary options because they wanted to be sure
they could get work and felt (rightly or wrongly) that it was important they
could put the right product names on their resumés.

~~~
jkaunisv1
I can't speak to Matlab/Octave but as for Photoshop, FOSS folks always say use
GIMP. But the interface is just so terrible compared to PS and I think they
underestimate how important that is. Maybe it's configurable but for example,
simple things like alt-tabbing between GIMP and other programs was painful
because it opened parts of its interface as separate windows, so you'd alt-tab
to your browser, then back to GIMP, but it wouldn't show the artboard, just
the tool panels. That's a separate alt-tab. And more generally, it felt like
everything in GIMP took two extra clicks than the equivalent PS operation.

Most people are goal-oriented when it comes to using software, not
ideological, and they'll go with what gets the job done with the least amount
of effort.

~~~
Jach
What's funny is Gimp used to be single-window, then for some reason they
redesigned to multi-window crap, and now they're back to single window (at the
cost of ctrl+s -- fine, whatever). Still many UI quirks for sure. I don't know
how much it matters for non-trained users though, Photoshop confuses me too on
the rare occasion I get to try using it. For professional artists, they're
likely using more tools than just "Photoshop for everything", so it's not like
they're incapable of learning new UIs even if they suck. (Edit: And generally
these days I'd rather advocate for more diversity in tooling, regardless of
closed/openness, just to avoid monoliths and monoculture.)

The GIMP-over-Photoshop argument should be because it does something Photoshop
doesn't (very possible with its ecosystem of plugins/filters -- for example a
"smart remove" plugin was around for quite some time before Adobe made their
own and spent who knows how much in marketing/demos for it) or because the
artist wants to save money.

Agree that people are goal oriented. OSS that's free-as-in-beer can help drive
adoption on account of being free, but ultimately the best OSS succeeds
because it's better than its competition in important ways. Pure clones are
risky, I'm glad Gimp doesn't try too much to be a clone.

~~~
jkaunisv1
It's not really about being incapable of learning new UIs though - I'm
perfectly capable, I just don't want to. Why learn a UI that takes 3X as many
steps to chop up a site design when there's one that takes X?

Sadly most artists who want to save money just pirate, which is what led to
the terrible Creative Cloud situation. But that led to Affinity which seems to
be a solid, buy-once (for cheap!) replacement. I agree the monolithic nature
of Adobe is bad for everybody but that's not a reason to choose a subpar tool.
Also people can write and sell their own plugins for Adobe products as well.

Anyway I think we're mostly on the same page.

------
williamstein
I added a slide about this to the talk I'm giving tomorrow on funding for open
source math software at University of Rochester:
[http://wstein.org/talks/2017-02-09-wing-
sage/slides.pdf](http://wstein.org/talks/2017-02-09-wing-sage/slides.pdf)

~~~
jordigh
Thanks, Will. I hope things are working out for you too.

~~~
williamstein
Thanks - definitely not yet, though I still have hope and feedback from
customers is very good.

------
bordercases
Can you get academia to give you funding to continue the project? It's a
common model in the bioinformatics world.

~~~
jordigh
He used to have exactly that, but his academic position ended 8 years ago.

------
dostoevsky
As a soon-to-be engineering graduate, I am very thankful for Octave. I've used
it (instead of MATLAB) for projects involving numerical methods, control
systems, image processing, and all kinds of data manipulation. While it may
not be as powerful as MATLAB for certain use cases, it is an amazing piece of
software.

------
EdiX
Free startup idea: Patreon for Open Source

* Users signs up to OSPatreon, downloads OSPatreon app that creates ospatreon directory in $HOME/.local/share/ or other operating system appropriate location, then creates a cronjob (or whatever) to rerun after one month

* Open Source projects that want in add a snippet of code that, when the application closes, writes the amount of time the application ran to $HOME/.local/share/ospatreon/

* At the end of the month the OSPatreon window pops up, shows the user a list of ospatreon projects the user has used, sorted by decreasing total time, lets user select how much to donate and the share each application gets (default: proportional to time the app was used)

* You collect money from the user, pocket some percentage, distribute the rest to OS projects.

Startup name: Fosstreon.

~~~
gregwebs
This is a good idea. However, I think it is problematic that most open source
usage is in the form of libraries. If a GUI leverages amazing open-source
libraries, only the GUI author would be paid. Additionally, many closed source
(GUI or not) projects leverage many open-source libraries.

~~~
palerdot
It can be solved with the main app listing its oss dependencies - similar to
dependencies in node package.json . the amount to be paid to the main project
gets split based on the dependencies and weightage specified.

------
bradneuberg
Just donated 25 bucks. Octave is a fabulous tool.

------
fooledrand
So xoctave[1] is not commercial version of octave?

[1] [http://xoctave.com/blog/](http://xoctave.com/blog/)

~~~
tavert
Looks like that was one of the several third-party Octave GUI projects that
predated the incorporation of an official GUI upstream in version 3.8 or 4.0
of Octave.

------
superquest
Could some kind of micropayment scheme help these projects make some money?

For web servers you might charge per request served. For text editors you
might charge per unit time the editor is being used.

It'd be interesting if the maintainer could define an acceptable salary, and
all "consumers" would just split the bill by proportion of their usage
according to the kind of metrics mentioned above.

I would gladly pay such a bill if nearly all the money went straight to the
developer, I could cap my contributions, and it was extremely easy to opt-in.
Ideally the package manager would read some dotfile or ask me! The problem
with projects like Bountysource is that people will never track down all the
OSS projects they depend on and figure what would be a reasonable donation to
give them. Too much agency is required of the user to achieve meaningful
adoption.

Has anything like this been attempted?

Edit: clarifications ...

~~~
whit537
> people will never track down all the OSS projects they depend on and figure
> what would be a reasonable donation to give them. Too much agency is
> required of the user to achieve meaningful adoption.

Yes! This gets at the B2B question mentioned elsewhere on this thread. At
Gratipay, we're working on integrating package managers to help with
aggregation. We've already loaded up all npm packages with stubbed out pages
like:

[https://gratipay.com/on/npm/express/](https://gratipay.com/on/npm/express/)

Now we're working on adding the ability for package maintainers to easily
claim their packages on Gratipay, and then companies can upload a package.json
or something and give a chunk of money to their entire dependency chain.
Happening here:

[https://github.com/gratipay/gratipay.com/pull/4305](https://github.com/gratipay/gratipay.com/pull/4305)

------
ireadzalot
Just donated to the J W. Eaton Consulting. Thank you for octave. I used it
throughout the Andrew Ng's ML course.

------
crb002
I'd apply to Mathworks as BDFL of Octave and work on Matlab support for open
source packages.

So many areas to work on. Integrating D3.js, integrating with Python machine
learning/dataframe libraries, FPGAs, SMT solvers like Z3 and CVC4, ...

~~~
crb002
Also ask Wolfram for some funding. They would love to gobble Mathworks clients
and could do so with better Octave integration.

------
vanattab
I have not tried the octave GUI in a couple of years but back then it was
awful. In my opinion this has always been octaves biggest weakness. If they
would fix this I am sure they gain significantly marketshare from matlab.

~~~
viraptor
> back then it was awful

I think you'll have to expand on that. "awful" is neither useful nor
constructive. Do you mean compatibility, interface, documentation, something
else?

------
rdstone2
This is worth while. Wish I could give more.

------
Mikeb85
Then make a website, register a company, and make it official. Maybe take a
page from RStudio's model and adapt an IDE to use Octave. Offer a product, any
product, and people will buy it.

I have no doubt people will pay for the author to continue to develop Octave,
but simply sending money to a PayPal account isn't something most people are
comfortable with. Plus how do you invoice that?

------
johnmarcus
Octave seems to have some great mentions on indeed.com.
[https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=octave&l=](https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=octave&l=)
Not sure if any of those jobs are near you, but give it a look. The position
titles might help you expand your search in your local area.

------
viraptor
Does anyone know if the paypal page is doing it right? Usually I see something
about donation with other projects. This one says "Purchase details" and has
quantity. I'd hate for it to be closed down for not complying with some paypal
rules.

------
geff82
I like Octave so I just sent some bucks. Doesn't hurt me, but helps the cause.

------
hebbarp
Yes, Octave the saviour. Sad that such projects aren't supported or there is
no foundation that can come forward to help the BDFL. Made my contribution,
hope it adds to the drop in the ocean. All the best.

------
jgord
Perhaps offer tiered packages of sponsorship for companies to advertise at
OctaveConf ?

eg. A special thankyou to our Gold sponsor XYZ Corp who donated 10k to support
Octave core developers and this conference. etc.

------
tigroferoce
I've never used so much octave (except for a couple of exams at university),
but 25 years of life and work devoted to the community deserves my 10$.

Thank you for all the work and good luck!

------
kazinator
Most people with an open source side project _P_ will never be in the position
of "oh, I need money; I guess I will have to find a non- _P_ job".

That's the norm.

------
tempire
Contribution made. Octave is on point, and easily accessible for those wanting
to learn Matlab-like syntax without having to mortgage their homes.

------
shitgoose
this is sad. I just rediscovered octave not long ago. I have been using R, but
was never comfortable with it - yukky syntax, clunky RStudio. octave has clean
and solid UI, nice syntax that sticks and reasonable base packages.

I wish you guys could develop a practice around octave, selling services,
while keeping base product free.

------
amelius
It's a sad truth that it is really difficult to make decent money writing
scientific software.

------
Chobicus
Made a small donation since I've used it in Andrew Ng's ML class

------
baki
Hmmm...Decrypt it with waterboarding!

------
stevehiehn
Jeez, This is heart breaking.

------
brilliantcode
> I would love to continue as the Octave BDFL but I also need to find a way to
> pay the bills.

Breaks my heart to see such devoted developers having so much trouble paying
bills for the work they've done.

I truly believe that this problem can be solved-by crowdfunding open source
developments that rivals commercial status quo, we can decouple ourselves from
restrictive licensing structures while paying people's bills for those who
contribute to the development.

Imagine if Octave just got $3000 USD / month, that should help with basic
costs of living (not knowing where the original author is) and also
incentivize continued development-25 years of unpaid work is a tragedy.

I still have not figured out all angles but this is my dream. To help open
source developers get paid and the work that becomes BSD or MIT licensed will
offer a strong alternative to commercial softwares.

I'm wondering if anybody else shares similar vision, please subscribe at
[http://letsopensource.com](http://letsopensource.com) or feel free to reach
out at my email in my profile.

~~~
noufalibrahim
I wonder if it's because the time investment demanded of the BDFL is so high.
If there were more people and each put in smaller amounts of their time to
work on the project, then it would be possible to sustain it without having to
depend on the charity of users.

I get the feeling that projects like Python operate like this but I have no
data to back my claim.

~~~
brilliantcode
Yes sort of like how Patreon crowdfunds independent youtube channels to create
the content the backers want to see.

I just figured out what BDFL meant :)

------
david38
I'm sure he can a job at Google.

