[R] History of R

[Kathy Gerber]

Earlier today I sent a question to Frank Harrell as an R developer with 
whom I am most familiar.  He suggested also that I put my questions to 
the list for additional responses.  Next month I'll be giving a talk on 
R as an example of high quality open source software.  I think there is 
much to learn from R as a high quality extensible product that (at least 
as far as I can tell) has never been "spun" or "hyped" like so many open 
source fads.

The question that intrigues me the most is why is R as an open source 
project is so incredibly successful and other projects, say for example, 
Octave don't enjoy that level of success?

I have some ideas of course, but I would really like to know your 
thoughts when you look at R from such a vantage point.

Thanks.
Kathy Gerber
University of Virginia
ITC - Research Computing Support