[Rd] Duncan's retirement: who's taking over Rtools?

[Spencer Graves]

       I concur with Moshe.  David and his team have done great thing 
for R, but a lion will not become a vegetarian.  I think that any 
reasonable reading of Microsoft's history will supports that 
perspective.  However, this is a fairly well documented phenomenon far 
beyond Microsoft.  Jean Tirole won the 2014 Nobel Memorial Prize in 
Economics for establishing that, especially regarding 
telecommunications.[1]  It is unwise to permit too much power to be held 
too tightly.


       Spencer Graves, PhD
       Founder
       EffectiveDefense.org
       7300 W. 107th St. # 506
       Overland Park, KS 66212


[1] See the discussion of this and the related work of Eli Noam in the 
Wikiversity article on "Net neutrality and 'Restoring Internet freedom'" 
(https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_and_%27Restoring_Internet_freedom%27). 



On 2017-09-28 7:03 PM, Moshe Olshansky via R-devel wrote:
> I think that even though some Microsoft employees may have good intentions Microsoft as a company can not be trusted. There will be always a danger that they will try to create their own version of R which works only on Windows and that will become increasingly divergent from "other" R. We witnessed such (cursed in my opinion) attempts with their treatment of Java and Internet Explorer. So I think that if we want to keep R as one language it is very important that the person(s) responsible for R on Windows will have no association with Microsoft.
> Best regards,Moshe.
>   
>
>      On Friday, 29 September 2017, 1:47:36 am GMT+10, David Smith via R-devel <r-devel at r-project.org> wrote:
>   
>   Likewise, a hearty THANK YOU from me and the rest of the team at Microsoft for all the work you, Duncan, have put into making R available for Windows users around the world over the past 15 years. I know it wasn't easy (Windows is not without its quirks), but R users everywhere, ourselves included, are deeply appreciative and have benefited greatly.
>
> The Microsoft R team is willing and able to produce builds for R on Windows going forward. As Duncan noted, we've been doing this already for some time for MRAN. I'd love to hear thoughts from this community on what that might mean, and Duncan I'll also reach out to you directly off-list.
>
> Cheers,
> # David
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: R-devel [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Joris Meys
> Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 08:28
> To: r-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: [Rd] Duncan's retirement: who's taking over Rtools?
>
> Dear dev team,
>
> I was sorry to see the announcement of Duncan about his retirement from maintaining the R Windows build and Rtools. Duncan, thank you incredibly much for your 15 years of devotion and your impressive contribution to the R community as a whole.
>
> Thinking about the future, I wondered whether there were plans for the succession of Duncan. Is it the intention to continue providing Rtools and a Windows build, or are these tasks left open for anyone (possibly Microsoft itself) to take them over? And if so, how will the decision be made on that?
>
> Cheers
> Joris
> --
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> Joris Meys
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