[R] History of R

[Achim Zeileis]

For those of you who want to learn more about the history of the R
project: There will be an invited lecture by John Fox and Kurt Hornik at
this year's useR! conference in Dortmund in August (...unfortunately a bit
too late for Kathy) about "The Past, Present, and Future of the R Project"
see

  http://www.R-project.org/useR-2008/

The talk will be a double feature with John focusing on "Social
Organization of the R Project" and Kurt on "Development in the R Project".
The core ingredients of the two parts will be
  - interviews that John has conducted with the R-core members (and a few
    other R developers),
  - development of CRAN, DSC, R News, R Foundation, useR!, R-Forge, ...

BTW: Registration for useR! is possible online at the URL mentioned above.
Sorry for the shameless plug ;-)
Z

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008, John Sorkin wrote:

> Kathy.
> A suggestion. As you gather your information about the history, I
> suggest you put fingers to keyboard and write down the history. You
> could start with the material Douglas just sent to you. Perhaps we can
> convince the R folks to place the history on the CRAN website - perhaps
> in WIKI format so our founding fathers, and mothers, can add to the
> history. I certainly would be nice to be able to give credit to the may
> people who have selflessly contributed their time, effort, and expertise
> to the R project!.
> John
>
> John Sorkin M.D., Ph.D.
> Chief, Biostatistics and Informatics
> University of Maryland School of Medicine Division of Gerontology
> Baltimore VA Medical Center
> 10 North Greene Street
> GRECC (BT/18/GR)
> Baltimore, MD 21201-1524
> (Phone) 410-605-7119
> (Fax) 410-605-7913 (Please call phone number above prior to faxing)
>
> >>> "Douglas Bates" <bates at stat.wisc.edu> 2/15/2008 4:23 PM >>>
> 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
> >
> >  ______________________________________________
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> >  and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
>
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