[R] History of R

Greg Snow Greg.Snow at imail.org
Thu Feb 21 23:29:58 CET 2008


Many of the doctors that I work with also have teaching appointments at
the local university and use the bookstore to buy academic versions of
SAS, SPSS, Minitab, and others.  When they have asked me to use those
(sometimes offered to buy me a student copy) I have refered them to the
licence agreements.  In some cases you are supposed to upgrade to a full
version to be able to use it for anything published, the acedemic price
is to be used only in class for learning how to use it.

I have SAS, SPSS, S-PLUS, and others installed on my work computer, but
I have R installed at work, home, my laptop, and even the pc at my
church (submitting monthly statistics as Chernoff faces got me promoted
to working in the nursary once, need to try that again).  I tend to
default to using R mostly these days, partly because I know that I don't
have to be chained to my work computer to use it.  I even submitted a
package to CRAN yesterday while traveling 60 mph on the bus ride home.

My first born male child is still 3 and cute, so I had better check my
SAS licence and maybe not use it for a while.  Maybe in 10 years when he
is a teenager I can get the licence that includes #6 (that is a joke,
don't tell my wife).

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
(801) 408-8111
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Barry Rowlingson
> Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 5:52 AM
> To: Earl F. Glynn
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] History of R
> 
> Earl F. Glynn wrote:
> 
> > Nearly six years ago, SAS also refused to give us academic pricing 
> > because we were not a degree granting institution.  About a 
> year ago, 
> > SAS finally granted us academic pricing, but most of the analysis 
> > momentum was already for the use of R/Bioconductor.
> 
> I recently read the small print on the academic license our 
> site has for SAS. You have to:
> 
>   1 inform SAS of any taught courses that use SAS
>   2 inform SAS of any research projects using SAS
>   3 allow SAS to refer to your institution as a SAS user
>   4 allow SAS to review your taught courses
>   5 ensure your courses are taught using qualified personnel.
>   6 give SAS your first-born male offspring
> 
>   I spoke to our site's licensing supremos and they say 
> they've never heard of anyone complying with 1 or 2. Point 4 
> sounds like petty fiddling in our educational business, and 
> point 5 left 'qualified' 
> undefined. Point 6 doesn't bother me since I don't have kids.
> 
>   Luckily other parts of our institution have made deals with 
> SAS to use it for consulting and training, so perhaps some of 
> these points don't apply to my department. I've not seen the 
> small print on that contract though, but I expect it to be 
> written in blood on freshly slaughtered deerskin...
> 
> Barry
> 
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