Message-ID: <x24qjmazhn.fsf@biostat.ku.dk>
Date: 2004-11-19T10:45:40Z
From: Peter Dalgaard
Subject: The hidden costs of GPL software?
In-Reply-To: <20041119024548.EUZS1919.tomts22-srv.bellnexxia.net@JohnDesktop8300>
"John Fox" <jfox at mcmaster.ca> writes:
> I don't think that
> it would be hard (although it would be time-consuming) to produce a much
> broader extension, but the result (in my opinion) would be as dubiously
> useful as the GUIs for SAS or S-PLUS.
Strategically, that might actually be a valid (and valiant) design
goal! From my limited experience with Rcmdr and SAS Analyst, I'd say
that Rcmdr is almost there, just a few little niggles like not
remembering values from the last time a form was filled in.
> By the way, if there were something I
> could wish for here it would be a slightly broader set of Tk widgets to be
> included with the Tcl/Tk that installs with R for Windows, since using
> widgets outside of this set creates installation obstacles for lower-level
> users.
Argh. Please stop poking at my guilty conscience.... Wrapping Tcl/Tk
extensions as R packages has been on my wish list too for some time,
with tktable as the obvious first candidate. (It's not just on
Windows; the default Unix/Linux installs of Tcl/Tk tend to be pretty
minimal too. On Windows we have this instructive twist on the BSD/GPL
debacle, that ActiveState made a very nice Tcl/Tk distribution with
all sorts of "batteries included", but we cannot bundle it with R as
they are restricting redistribution.)
--
O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3
c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N
(*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907