What is R?

2 messages · Diego Kuonen, Thomas Lumley

Thu, Feb 8, 2001 11:01 AM #

Dear all

there's something. that puzzles me about what R is :-)

   "R is available as Free Software under the terms of the Free 
    Software Foundation's GNU General Public License in source 
    code form."

(Source: http://www.r-project.org/about.html)

But, looking at the second paragraph of the same site, you
see this:

   "... and R provides an Open Source route to participation in
    that activity."

As we all know the term "open source" means something close 
(but not identical) to "free software". 

So, what is R?

It clearly seems to be "free software" and not only "open source" 
software, or?


Finally, Let's have a look at the following:

   "... This article describes why using the term ``open source'' does 
    not solve any problems, and in fact creates some. These are the reasons 
    why it is better to stick with ``free software.'' ... "

(Source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html )


I'm puzzled, are you?


Greets

  Diego


P.S.: What about "Omegahat"?

Diego Kuonen $\in$ Chairs of Statistics $\subset$ DMA \@ EPFL
http://stat.kuonen.com                  http://www.Statoo.com 
Q: How do I type "for i in *.dvi; do xdvi $i; done" in a GUI?  
/*      panic("esp: Aiee penguin on the SCSI-bus.");       */
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Thomas Lumley

Thu, Feb 8, 2001 11:17 AM #

On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Diego Kuonen wrote:

R is Open Source software in that it's license complies with the OSI
definition. It is "free software" by the Debian and Free Software
Foundation definitions, and is official GNU software.  No problems
here. 

As Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond (among others) have pointed out,
the difference between these concepts is one of philosophical and
marketing emphasis. The R developers, as far as I know, have no unified
view on "open source" vs "free", nor do they need one. 


	-thomas


Thomas Lumley			Asst. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley@u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle

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