Kees Lemmens wrote:
Hi,
In our Math department we are rapidly replacing Matlab (commercial and VERY expensive !) with Octave (GNU Open Source). I wonder: wouldn't it be a better to make a connection to an Open Source project like Octave instead ?
As someone else in this thread pointed out, the I/O capabilities in FlightGear are open for anyone to use. The work I did was simply to make the binary structure a bit more predictable in a cross platform environment. Does Octave have facilities for modeling flight dynamics or control systems? If so, I'm happy to work with an Octave developer to iron out any interfacing issues.
Matlab is squeezing lot's of money out of people. They try to connect just about anything to their software so that users won't even consider using anything else (apart for those who pay the bills ;-).
But I don't think that FlightGear - as an outstanding Open Source project - should co-operate in making this nasty company even more powerful ...
Even Airbus seemed to be fed up with the Matlab tax-collectors and started developing their own Open Source Matlab-clone already some years ago : SciLab.
BTW: this reminds me of another nasty company ;-)
People are going to think what they are going to think about business, politics, etc. And this forum is the wrong place to discuss those issues. I have never looked at Octave, myself, but if it's a legitimate contender, and Octave users want to interface with FlightGear for some reason, then I'm happy to participate and make that as seamless and easy as possible.
For what it's worth, many very big name companies use matlab/simulink. If these companies also start using FlightGear in conjunction with matlab as a visualization tool, then that increases FlightGear's "market share" in a very high profile segment of the market. That's good in and of itself, but if some of these companies (or developers that work at these companies) make changes/additions to FlightGear, that's a direct benefit to us. All of these forces feed each other, and hopefully build an upward spiral to make FlightGear better and better.
Personally, I think open-source is a great and wonderful way to develop software ... it's not perfect, but it has many advantages. There's no question that this is the best approach for FlightGear. But at the same time, people need to feed thier families ... those of us who are cursed to live out their lives as software geeks (with few other marketable skills) shouldn't be prevented from making a living from our primary skill. I believe the world needs a combination of proprietary and open-source software. Both approaches have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. I think the "optimal" way to develop software is to find good ways to marry the two approaches. But like any marriage, one of the hardest things is to figure out the exact details (balance of power, division of labor, etc.) between the spouses. Some matches work better than others, but a good match is far more powerful and capable than individuals working in isolation.
Regards,
Curt.
-- Curtis Olson http://www.flightgear.org/~curt HumanFIRST Program http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/ FlightGear Project http://www.flightgear.org Unique text: 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
_______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
