Tuesday 21 August 2012

Octave and underage drinking

Octave is just like good wine. It's in constant active development and has a good ageing potential. Using Octave today is a better experience than using it 2 years ago, and from what I have seen, it will be an even better experience later.

However, unlike wine, you can be of any age to drink it. It's interesting to notice how with the help of Google Summer of Code and ESA Summer of Code in Space Octave got new students involved on it, some of them under the legal drinking age. If you are following planet Octave you probably read some of their posts already. Does this mean that Google and ESA support underage drinking? Of course this is variable between countries and the students in question are all legal drinkers on their own countries. But the nature of Octave is different, it can be tried on the internet where it's hard to decide what rules apply. And so, Octave also brings up curious sociological questions, just as the new world brings down the old concepts of geographical limitations.

If you hang around #octave on irc.freenode.net, you will discover that it can be quite a social activity too. And OctConf2012, a physical congregation of Octave connoisseurs, was just a month ago in Montreal, Canada. And even others have show up, people new to the flavour learning how to have the best taste of it.

But it is not an exclusively social activity. Octave respects your comfort zone. Just like a bottle of wine or whisky, you are free to enjoy it on your own, laying on your best chair with Pink Floyd on the background.

Finally, Octave is also completely odourless and your breath won't give away what you have been up to. You'll get no angry or disappointed words or looks from your parents, partner, children or pets.

It doesn't matter on young you are. Stop giving grey hairs to your family, join the Octave developers in the ageing process. Come drink with us and enjoy Octave responsibly.

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