Matlab is still huge. As long as there's a need to run Matlab scripts, there's a need for Octave. The non-Matlab free alternatives aren't really competition for

Matlab is still huge. As long as there's a need to run Matlab scripts, there's a need for Octave. The non-Matlab free alternatives aren't really competition for Octave. We're not short on users or developers. We're short on money. The first possibility has been attempted. In effect, that's partly why the GUI happened: a company really wanted it and paid for its development. jwe has been able to coast on this kind of gig for a while, about 8 years now. It's just that it's never been a very financially stable thing. The rest of your suggestion seems to be about running a business. That's the thing we've just never really known how to do. There are a lot of business details that we've never really figured out because we'd rather be writing code.