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GNU Octave 3.0 Released After 11 Years

Posted by kdawson on from the math-just-works dept.

Digana writes "GNU Octave is a free numerical computing environment highly compatible with the MATLAB language. After 11 years of development since version 2.0, stable version 3.0 released yesterday. This version is interesting because unlike other free or semi-free MATLAB competitors like Scilab, specific compatibility with MATLAB code is a design goal. This has manifested itself in goodies like better support for MATLAB's Handle Graphics, a syntax closer to MATLAB's own for many functions, and many functions from the sister project Octave-Forge ported to the core Octave project for an enriched functionality closer to the toolboxes provided by MATLAB. GUI development is underway, but still no JIT compiling, which is a show-stopper for Octave newbies coming from MATLAB with unvectorized code."

1 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Well, if they ever become competitive to Matlab by steve_bedrick · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I bought a license for Matlab for my old PowerPC-based PowerBook about a year ago, and was initially quite pleased with Mathworks- the times I had to call them for support, they were helpful and responsive. All that changed when I switched to an Intel-based Mac a month or so ago. While moving all of my software over to my new laptop, I observed that most software companies used one of two possible approaches to the software redistribution problem:
    1. Release an Intel-compatible binary of their product, and make it available to current license-holders free of charge; or
    2. Take advantage of the opportunity to do a new major-version revision of their product, which license-holders would have to pay to upgrade to.

    Each of these, to me, seem like reasonable solutions— if it's a major-version update, I'd have to pay for it anyway... and if it's just a recompiled version of the product I already have, it should be free to current users. It turns out, however, that there was a third possibility, which is what Mathworks chose:

    3. Release a new minor-version Universal Binary update, and then make all current customers buy a new full-price license in order to get it.

    So, in order to run Matlab on an Intel-based Mac, current PowerPC license holders have to re-purchase their expensive software from scratch. No upgrade path, no nothing— just a nice, loud, "screw you" from Mathworks to their users. And it's not like we could just use our PowerPC verisons under Rosetta- there was a workaround, but it involved disabling all of the graphing/visualization features. Basically, it was a "pay for a full new license or don't use Matlab on your new computer" kind of thing.

    I dunno, maybe it's not that big of a deal, but it still felt pretty crappy. From a customer service standpoint, it wasn't exactly a master-stroke- it wouldn't have really cost them anything just to let current license-holders have an Intel-compatible copy of the software they'd already paid for...