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All nvidia did was make an API compatible BLAS library with automatic GPU offloading. Other programs using BLAS functions then get automatically GPU accelerated. Nobody altered octave. They just LD_PRELOAD it in place. The same thing works with R too.

The goal is "have software that works," not "have software that retains ideological purity at the cost of advancement."

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That's your goal. In my opinion our goal as society should absolutely be software that everyone can "run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve".

That's great. However, we'll all be dead and the job still won't be finished. I'm all for free software but the "Stallman method" is going to take a couple of lifetimes. Being a little practical will address the real problem of expensive software. I've been an Emacs user for 20 years but these days I find myself using Sublime and IntelliJ much more often. I think we're all better off if we also support good commercial and create a competitive environment

There is no "our goal as society". But the vast majority of people that care about running Matlab, Octave don't share your goal.

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