GNU Octave is an interactive system for numerical computations that includes tools for solving systems of linear and nonlinear equations, integrating ordinary differential and differential-algebraic equations, performing statistical analyses, and many other fundamental numerical operations.  There are also tools for specialized tasks including the analysis and design of linear control systems and signal, image, and audio processing.
Octave has a growing worldwide user base with applications in industrial and academic research and teaching.  The complete source code for Octave is freely redistributable under the terms of the GNU General Public License.  Binary packages of Octave are available for all the major GNU/Linux distributions, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X systems.

Although GNU Octave has hundreds of thousands of users, the community of Octave developers remains quite small.  This talk will consider factors that may have led to the current situation, explore some ways that we can increase the number of active developers, and discuss the future of the project.