Re: Numerical Mathematics Consortium

[John W. Eaton]

On 19-Nov-2005, Paul Kienzle wrote:

| I think they can have useful success even without matlab.

Yes, but the Mathworks does not have to follow the "standard" and it
seems unlikely that they would unless it would somehow mean more
sales.

Octave users have pushed for compatibility with Matlab.  So if a
standard diverges from Matlab behavior, I suspect that Octave users
would want compatibility.  But that is just my guess.

| > It also seems that Octave (and other numerical software such
| > as SciPy) would be actively invited by such a consortium...
| 
| Three membership levels:
| 
| * Full at $2500/annum with voting rights;
| * associate at $200/annum with full access to outputs;
| * advisory at $0/annum
| 
| The second statement concerns me---it suggests that the outputs of this 
| organization will not be freely redistributable, which would  make them 
| useless to us.

I have no interest in paying to join this group (even if I thought it
was reasonable, we simply don't have the resources for that).

Some time ago, I was invited to join as an advisor or associate (also
at no charge) but declined.  My reason was that without voting rights,
I would not have much real influence in the final decision making
process for anything the NMC does regarding the standard.  It seems to
me that the associate and advisory members of the NMC would be acting
as unpaid consultants assisting in the development of a standard that
could be of significant value to the companies behind the standard.  I
think the situation should be reversed.  If a company wants to profit
from our hard-earned experience, they should be paying us!  Finally,
given my current commitments to Octave and other projects, I don't
believe that I have the time to take on any additional projects as a
volunteer.

jwe



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