mafbar

I'm not sure about that since I'm not in any field that requires MATLAB at the moment. However, my specific case is for undergraduate introductory courses, and perhaps even at schools. To go even beyond this conversation a bit, any numerical / computational / algorithmic principles should probably be taught using Python. I had another numerical methods course where students can use any language they want, either C or C++ or Python. So I know it's possible.

True that. I think because for me, as a casual user, yes I use Linux, but I only use it basically for browsing, media consumption (songs, movies), writing down notes, simple office suite, some light gaming, and that's pretty much it. Sure there's the direction that Linux applications are run in containers like Flatpaks, but I can also imagine the direction of almost everything running on a browser engine since it's cross-platform. Whether I choose Debian or Fedora or Arch or MacOS or HaikuOS or whatever - I don't think there's gonna be any significant difference between them.

Keep in mind, I'm talking from the perspective of a filthy casual. More technical/philosophical-minded people may have different approaches in their computing altogether.

Yeah, I imagine this'd be the case. Especially since MATLAB is designed for heavyweight computation in engineering industries, not merely simple looping or graphs. I'll be honest and say that I neither use MATLAB nor GNU Octave since my work does not require it; I was just recalling a particular story during my student days that I thought would be interesting to share. For such heavy, niche and always evolving set of toolboxes and libraries, we can reasonable expect no open-source alternative will be able to "replace" MATLAB in any meaningful sense, it's just too powerful and big.

I'm mostly okay with that though. These sorts of work are done in institutions or industries that can and should be able to afford them. It's the reason why I don't reasonably expect GIMP to overthrow Photoshop or Kdenlive/Openshot/Shotcut to overthrow Premiere Pro, unless somehow massive funds are channeled to their development. Rare cases like Linux or Blender or Firefox do happen, but they have massive backings.

I agree with that. It's much easier streamlining software choice rather than letting people choose their own alternatives, since it's a mess to integrate workflows and all that.

My issue is that we're basically forced to pirate for an introductory course, where I actually don't even think it's necessary to use MATLAB. You can use GNU Octave or even Python. It's quite frustrating.

It's probably the main reason why I think most open-source software will never be able to replace their proprietary counterpart: the fact that proprietary software are typically developed for either massive or highly niche industries, and so they are funded and are basically now integrated inside the ecosystem of such industries. As people use it more and more, Mathworks will develop more toolboxes with hardware integration, until it basically becomes the de facto software for that purpose (e.g. computation). I'm all for open-source software, but I don't see a way out of it. Big companies with mega budgets can always improve their software, far outpacing any alternative open-source projects.

I don't use MATLAB nor GNU Octave for my work, but I imagine that the hardware that I'll operate on probably require MATLAB, and so there's no incentive for me to use GNU Octave, especially if it has poor hardware support or lack of toolboxes or whatever such issues. This is a natural consequence of open-source alternatives being built from scratch typically with volunteers. That's insane to me that GNU Octave is still somewhat usable for some basic computational work.

It's $1K per head?

Piracy is so widespread in public universities here that nobody thinks about it as being wrong.

That's interesting to me. So it has spread towards the public institution level, where many or most people think it's just normal.

It’s literally the reason a lot of us in south America can scape poverty.

Probably one of the biggest examples of justified piracy. I'm not sure if it's fully justifiable, but it is really hard to deny its benefits. One thing though, piracy as a means may be justified, but I'm unsure if it's for the ends.

Out of curiosity, what is your field of work?

I've seen people mention this before. This will be troublesome if you require massive computing speed, otherwise it is still acceptable, since you're basically using a MATLAB clone.

What do you say to people that maintains the POV that it's theft?

You're welcome!

I'd imagine that for some high-level computational work, GNU Octave may not fare that well. For an introductory computational course, I think it's more than enough, probably? It reminds me of many other open-source projects - they may not be up to par when it comes to their proprietary counterpart.

What do you say to people whose position is "you are stealing their work; nothing is free"?

If I may ask, what native apps that you use that are not available as web-based applications yet?