3. Development model

We saw that Scilab, developed by researchers, was made freely available on the Internet with source code in 1994. In the years that followed, Scilab became increasingly popular, especially in academic circles. By 2000, the Scilab website was reporting some 10,000 monthly withdrawals of the software, rising to over 15,000 by the end of 2004. Thousands of websites were already referencing Scilab, and books, courses and toolkits were being produced. To ensure this success, it was necessary to get manufacturers to use Scilab too.