Re: Octave and Guile?

["John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>]

On 14-Sep-2000, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

| Guile is the GNU standard extensibility package, so it is important
| for Octave to use Guile rather than Python, even if the Python license
| incompatibility issue did not exist.

I understand your point of view.

Also apart from any license issues is the (perceived) importance of
popularity.  I'm not sure that popularity among users matters much,
since it is developers that I'm looking for, not a horde of clueless
users.  OTOH, my boss, who has secured the funding that has made it
possible for me to work on Octave for the past 9 years or so, tells me
things like

  Well, stating the obvious, it's hard to have impact if no one knows
  what you are doing.  The other issue is whether guile disappears or
  doesn't remain competitive in the future because the user base is too
  small.  Remember, our strategy was to have impact in the next
  project. 

So, if it seems like combining Guile and Octave cannot attract enough
developer effort to make some waves but combining Python and Octave
could, he might not be as interested in funding my work on the project
unless I use Python.  We are also thinking about how many different
packages are (potentially) available to us if we choose Guile or
Python.

I'm personally more interested in what will be technically superior,
and also what will be more fun to work with.

Any comments would be welcome.  I'm not trying to start a flame war.
I'd really like to know whether people think that Guile will have any
real impact any time soon.  Could Octave provide some momentum for
Guile, or would it just be seen as a minor development?

Thanks,

jwe
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