[R] History of R

[Douglas Bates]

On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Kathy Gerber <kathy at virginia.edu> wrote:
> Earlier today I sent a question to Frank Harrell as an R developer with
>  whom I am most familiar.  He suggested also that I put my questions to
>  the list for additional responses.  Next month I'll be giving a talk on
>  R as an example of high quality open source software.  I think there is
>  much to learn from R as a high quality extensible product that (at least
>  as far as I can tell) has never been "spun" or "hyped" like so many open
>  source fads.

>  The question that intrigues me the most is why is R as an open source
>  project is so incredibly successful and other projects, say for example,
>  Octave don't enjoy that level of success?

First and foremost there is the incredible generosity of Ross Ihaka
and Robert Gentleman who, after spending an enormous amount of time
and effort in development of the initial implementation, did not
demand exclusive ownership of their work but allowed others to make
changes.  I believe Martin Maechler was the first non-Auckland person
to get write access to the source code repository and I'm sure that
the good experience of working at a distance with Martin persuaded R &
R to open it up to others.  Martin is polite, considerate, meticulous
and precise (he is a German-speaking Swiss so meticulous and precise
kind of comes with the territory) and you couldn't ask for a first
experience in sharing something that is very valuable to you with
someone whom you may never have met in person.

Not everyone has been that pleasant to work with.  One of the first
things that I did when I joined R-core was to blow up at Kurt and
Fritz about something - on Christmas Eve!  I surprised the group
didn't boot me out after that start.

When a project is gaining momentum the personalities of the initial
developers have a big influence on its success.  The R project has
been fortunate in that regard.

>  I have some ideas of course, but I would really like to know your
>  thoughts when you look at R from such a vantage point.

>  Thanks.
>  Kathy Gerber
>  University of Virginia
>  ITC - Research Computing Support
>
>  ______________________________________________
>  R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>  PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>  and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>