[R] History of R

[Spencer Graves]

Hi, Kathy, John, et al.: 

      Has there been an answer to the question of why R has been much 
more successful than Octave? 

      In this regard, can anyone provide a price comparison of student 
versions for S-Plus and Matlab during R's gestation period, 10-15 years 
ago?  I had the impression, perhaps incorrect, that several college 
profs (including Ross and Robert) felt their student's could not afford 
S-Plus, and that was a large part of the motivation, not just for R & R, 
but for many other early contributors to R.  Insightful has been 
incredibly generous to the R community recently, and I hope that 
continues.  However, I wonder if R would have emerged when it did and 
been as successful if academic prices for S-Plus prior to, say, 1992 or 
1997 had been substantially lower, especially outside the US.  Of 
course, it may have been easier for the Matlab to offer deep academic 
discounts than S-Plus, because Matlab may have a larger industrial base 
market. 

      Beyond that, the "contributed packages" system has helped 
immensely in R's growth;  if Octave has such a system, it's not as 
visible as CRAN.  I recall hearing from Doug Bates (last August at useR! 
2007 in Ames, IA) that a major turning point in the development of R 
came when Martin Maechler convinced Ross & Robert to accept contributed 
packages.  However, this is my memory, and it would be wise if feasible 
to clarify this with Ross, Robert, Martin, Doug, and others.

      That's just my US$0.02 (which is only worth roughly half what it 
was on the international market at this time in 2001). 

      Hope this helps,
      Spencer     

Kathy Gerber wrote:
> Thanks to all who responded so thoughtfully.  I would like to summarize 
> briefly the observations and opinions so far with some of my own 
> interpretations and thoughts.  John Fox is working on a much deeper 
> history scheduled for August, and his three factors are a good starting 
> point.
>
> John Fox wrote:
>   
>> Dear Kathy,
>>
>> As Achim has mentioned, I've been doing interviews with members of the R
>> Core team and with some other people central to the R Project. Although I
>> haven't entirely organized and finished reflecting on this material, the
>> following factors come immediately to mind:
>>
>> (1) Doug has already mentioned the personal and technical talents of the
>> original developers, and their generosity in opening up development to a
>> Core group and in making R open source. To that I would add the collective
>> talents of the Core group as a whole.
>>   
>>     
> There are three attributes here:
> a) Personal talent:  I take this to mean communication and teaching 
> ability along with leadership.  These are the talents and skills that 
> provide groundwork for a mature type of collaboration, more along the 
> lines found in tightly focused academic areas.  I would think that these 
> attributes are  big factors in why R has not devolved into forks and 
> holy wars.
> b) Technical talent: Both the technical talent and domain knowledge of 
> the original developers and the R Core group are better than 
> consistently solid.  The leaders are not rock stars or cult figures.
> c) Generosity:  The responses themselves sincerely gave credit to 
> others.  While this may appear to be consistent with Eric Raymond's 
> notions of open source as built upon a "gift culture," I haven't really 
> seen this going on elsewhere at such a level.
>   
>> (2) R implements the S language, which already was in wide use, and which
>> has many attractive features (each of use, etc.).
>>
>>   
>>     
> One person who emailed privately pointed out that many open source 
> projects are "knock-offs," e.g., linux itself is a unix knock-off.  I 
> believe the point is that R is not a totally new approach or invention, 
> rather it is based upon advancing some product or collection of ideas 
> that are already in place.
>   
>> (3) The R package system and the establishment of CRAN allowed literally
>> hundreds of developers to contribute to the broader R Project. More
>> generally, the Core group worked to integrate users into the R Project,
>> e.g., through R News, the r-help list (though naive users aren't always
>> treated gently there), and the useR conferences.
>>
>>   
>>     
> Again, this is another distinctive feature, perhaps not in concept but 
> in degree and level of actual success thanks to good planning.  Like so 
> many other points, this goes back to the leadership.
>
> Another point made was the need or demand for such an application.   Yet 
> another was the planning that goes into avoiding breakage of packages.  
> What no one mentioned though was the idea of standards. 
>
> Finally, in comparing with Octave, it was mentioned that Octave may be 
> stuck in a position of playing catch-up to Matlab. 
>
> What I have here is far from complete, but I did want to give some 
> feedback tonight.  Again, thanks to you all for such articulate 
> responses, and I will point to my slides, and later on write up a summary.
>
> Kathy Gerber
>
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