Octave and Gnuplot Coming To Android

New submitter MathIsTasty writes "Recently, it was announced on the Octave-maintainers list that a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to bring Matlab style numerical computations and graphing to Android via a 'more than' port of Octave and gnuplot. While I doubt it will be as successful as some recent games on Kickstarter, is this a reasonable way to fund free software development? Now, we just have to worry about people working on simulating solar irradiation while driving. Here is a good blog post about the project."

Re:... that cost at least $50,000 ?

[MasterAir]

The kickstarter says that the project will continue anyway, but successful kickstarter funding money will accelerate the progress, enabling the developer to focus the time necessary to get the project done quickly. I think it's neat, and while many people will say that they're after free (as in free beer) software, if enough people can donate a few $$ I think it's a noble goal, and I think free (as in speech) software is more important. I've pledged a few dollars, and hope it gets the funds needed.

Re:... that cost at least $50,000 ?

[necro81]

Just because the disparate software is free doesn't mean getting them to work together requires zero work.

"I know guys: Octave runs natively in Linux, and Android is just Linux. This will be totally easy! In fact, I'll download the source files tonight, whip up a custom build script with one hand while downing a Mountain Dew with the other, and have it done tomorrow."

But as any Android developer will tell you, taking something that runs on a Linux desktop and getting it on Android - making it function properly, getting it to look good, and getting it to interface with the Android UI - it really hard, tedious work. Testing on all the different Android platforms out there alone could keep someone occupied for a year. Is it really so outlandish to ask for some money for the work? $50k will get you a quality software engineer for about half a year (salary + benefits + office overhead). It's not that much.

I may just donate for the hell of it - and I use iOS and Matlab on a daily basis.