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Discussions about writing the software that would eventually become Octave started in about 1988 with James B. Rawlings and John W. Eaton at the University of Texas. John W. Eaton was the original author of Octave, starting full-time development in February 1992. He is still the primary maintainer. The community of users/developers has in addition contributed some code and fuels the discussion on the mailing lists help@octave.org (user forum), maintainers@octave.org (development issues). | Discussions about writing the software that would eventually become Octave started in about 1988 with James B. Rawlings and John W. Eaton at the University of Texas. John W. Eaton was the original author of Octave, starting full-time development in February 1992. He is still the primary maintainer. The community of users/developers has in addition contributed some code and fuels the discussion on the mailing lists help@octave.org (user forum), maintainers@octave.org (development issues). | ||
==Why '''GNU''' Octave?== | ==Why "Octave"?== | ||
Octave's name has nothing to do with music. It's named after [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave_Levenspiel Octave Levenspiel], a former professor of John who was famous for his ability to do quick back-of-the-envelope calculations. You can hear John pronounce the name "Octave" a few times [http://videolectures.net/mloss08_eaton_oct/ in this video]. We hope that GNU Octave will help perform computations with the same ease that Mr Levenspiel could do so. | |||
==Why ''''GNU'''' Octave?== | |||
The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. | The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. | ||