On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Marc Schwartz <marc_schwa...@comcast.net> wrote: > on 01/07/2009 08:44 AM Kevin E. Thorpe wrote: >> Zaslavsky, Alan M. wrote: >>> This article is accompanied by nice pictures of Robert and Ross. >>> >>> Data Analysts Captivated by Power of R >>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html >>> >>> >>> >>> January 7, 2009 Data Analysts Captivated by R's Power By ASHLEE VANCE >>> >>> >>> SAS says it has noticed R's rising popularity at universities, >>> despite educational discounts on its own software, but it dismisses >>> the technology as being of interest to a limited set of people >>> working on very hard tasks. >>> >>> "I think it addresses a niche market for high-end data analysts that >>> want free, readily available code," said Anne H. Milley, director of >>> technology product marketing at SAS. She adds, "We have customers who >>> build engines for aircraft. I am happy they are not using freeware >>> when I get on a jet." >>> >> >> Thanks for posting. Does anyone else find the statement by SAS to be >> humourous yet arrogant and short-sighted? >> >> Kevin
> It is an ignorant comment by a marketing person who has been spoon fed > her lines...it is also a comment being made from a very defensive and > insecure posture. To some extent but we should also realize that open source software is a nonsensical idea to those in the commercial software business. It just doesn't fit into their world view. As part of the 40th anniversary of Technometrics there will be a discussion article on "The Future of Statistical Computing" by Leland Wilkinson in the Nov. 2008 issue. (I say "will be" because I don't see it on the web site yet.) Lee is the creator of Systat and is now associated with SPSS, Inc. which bought Systat. I am one of the discussants and I agreed with most of what Lee had to say except with regard to the role of open source software. Lee looked at the market share of SAS, SPSS, Stata, S-PLUS, Minitab, etc. in statistical software and based his projections on that. He had some ball park figure for the "market share" of R and concluded that it wouldn't really be important. My response was that this misses the point. R is a community, not a "product" in the traditional software sense. I referred to Eric Raymond's essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", which I think is still relevant in contrasting the views of those in the commercial software and the open source software communities. > Congrats to R Core and the R Community. This is yet another sign of R's > growth and maturity. ______________________________________________ R-help@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.
