This page should clarify about the various entities and actors around the GNU Octave programming language.
The GNU Octave project was initialized 1992 by John W. Eaton <jwe@octave.org>. It consists of a software source code repository and a community of people who work on that code. The most clear cut line that can be drawn is that there is a set of people who have commit access to the source code repository: there are currently 24 committers (10 active and 14 dormant). This set of people doesn’t really define the entire project. Additionally, there are many people who are prolific contributors to the GNU Octave ecosystem but who do not have “commit bit.” The communal nature of open-source makes it difficult to precisely define where the GNU Octave project ends and the greater community begins, which is exactly how we like it. Finally, most development decisions are made by or agreed with John W. Eaton.
By submitting patches to the GNU Octave project, you agree to the following conditions:
In the Octave source code, all files are marked with a copyright statement that says
Copyright (C) YYYY-YYYY The Octave Project Developers.
This copyright notice is used to ease the burden of maintaining copyright information in the source files, not to diminish or remove credit for contributions. Detailed information about what changes have been made and who has made them is maintained in the revision history of the Octave sources.
If you wish, you will be credited as a contributor in the Octave documentation.
Since 2023 the GNU Octave project receives donations from both individuals and corporations with the kind support from NumFOCUS, a 501(c)(3) public charity in the United States of America.
How donations are spent is decided by Octave core developers led by John W. Eaton.
For full transparency about collected donations and how they helped improving the GNU Octave project, please visit https://opencollective.com/gnu-octave.
Despite the free usage of the FSF infrastructure for distributing the GNU Octave source code, the Octave project does not receive any direct or indirect monetary funding by the FSF.
Before 2023 the FSF helped the GNU Octave project to receive donations from both individuals and corporations.
There are organizations that people sometimes mistakenly believe have some kind of official control over the GNU Octave project. This section details three of them, but please note that they have neither any official relationship nor any governance capacity with the GNU Octave project.
Octave Forge https://octave.sourceforge.io/ is the former collection of software packages, that can be easily installed and used with GNU Octave. The Octave SourceForge project was initiated in 2000 and active development stopped in 2018. New packages are not accepted, but a few existing packages are still maintained. The project lists 58 members (5 active and 53 dormant) maintaining existing Octave packages, but not the source code of GNU Octave itself.
Octave Packages https://gnu-octave.github.io/packages/ is another collection of Octave packages and intended successor of Octave Forge. New packages are accepted here and the development of Octave packages is independent of GNU Octave itself and maintained by the Octave GitHub Organization.
The GitHub Organization https://github.com/gnu-octave/ was established around 2020. It is a loose connection of currently 46 members (20 active and 26 dormant) developing software intended to be used with GNU Octave (including Octave Packages), but not the source code of GNU Octave itself.
If you have any questions about GNU Octave’s governance structure, please reach out via email to <governance@octave.org>.
This page is inspired by the JuliaLang project.
