[R] R in the NY Times

[Florian Lengyel]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Tony Breyal <tony.breyal at googlemail.com> wrote:
> "We have customers who build engines for aircraft. I am happy they are
> not using freeware when I get on a jet."
>
> The lady who made this comment, Anne H. Milley, director of technology
> product marketing at SAS, has written a response to try and clarify
> what she meant (funilly enough, i got this link from a SAS mate of
> mine who is now going to have a look into R for the first time):
>
> http://blogs.sas.com/sascom/index.php?/archives/434-This-post-is-rated-R.html
>
>
> [quote]
> "As for open source and my airplane quote …
>
> My remark reflects a key difference between R and SAS, that of
> support, reliability, and validation. Customers value SAS for many
> things, including our extensive testing, documentation, 24/7 support,
> and training. In contrast, the quality of proliferating R packages is
> varied and uneven, especially in complex analytical modules. Mistakes
> in these packages can lead to misleading results, even for experienced
> users.
>
> The airplane comment was meant to point out this key difference. Not
> to condemn open source. In fact, SAS values open-source software. Our
> software runs on Linux. We use some open-source tools in development.
> And we plan to embrace open source further in the future.
>
> The world has many complex problems. We advocate approaches based on
> science, on analysis to address these problems. Making more analytic
> methods readily available is a good thing. From SAS; from R; from the
> resourceful individuals who innovate with their tools of choice,
> regardless of the source."
> [end quote]
>


Ms. Milley mischaracterizes her remark about the relative
unreliability of "freeware"
as if she had employed the term"open source."

David A. Wheeler's "Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS,
FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers!" provides quantitative measures
for evaluating open source software, including
market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and
total cost of ownership. With respect to
the reliability of open source software, Wheeler writes, "There are a
lot of anecdotal stories that OSS/FS is more reliable, but finally
there is quantitative data confirming that mature OSS/FS programs are
often more reliable [than equivalent proprietary software programs]."
Wheeler lists among his sources the Fuzz Report
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~bart/fuzz/fuzz.html .