Hi, I was thinking to ask the University computing Labs here to install R and I was told they need a statement that the software (R) is Y2K compliant. Which I cannot find in CRAN. (in addition to the licensing info). Is it a big issue to put such a statement in R? or this has legal implications that R do not want as a "free" software? If possible I would like to see the statement on both Unix AND Win version of R so I can ask them to "officially install" R on the labs machines. Mai Z mai at ms.uky.edu http://www.ms.uky.edu/~mai/ -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
On Tue, 30 Mar 1999, Mai Zhou wrote:> Hi, I was thinking to ask the University computing Labs here > to install R and I was told they need a statement that the software (R) > is Y2K compliant. Which I cannot find in CRAN. (in addition to the > licensing info). > > Is it a big issue to put such a statement in R? or this has legal implications > that R do not want as a "free" software?It is an important issue. R, as the licensing says, "comes with no warranty whatsoever". We can't provide any guarantee that R does any particular thing correctly. Also, if the university wants "Y2K compliance" without giving any specification of exactly what they mean it sounds like they are just making sure that they will be able to blame someone if things go wrong. If they are actually interested in whether R is likely to die on 1/1/{20}00 then you could reassure them that the basic R distribution doesn't represent years as two-digit strings anywhere. However, there is nothing to stop the user from doing so -- garbage in, garbage out. In any case, the current R (0.63.3) will probably be several versions obsolete by Y2K, though there's no particular reason to think it will be any more buggy in January than in December. Thomas Lumley Assistant Professor, Biostatistics University of Washington, Seattle -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
On Tue, 30 Mar 1999, Mai Zhou wrote:> Hi, I was thinking to ask the University computing Labs here > to install R and I was told they need a statement that the software (R) > is Y2K compliant. Which I cannot find in CRAN. (in addition to the > licensing info). >Apart from Thomas' contribution, and the pass-the-buck mentality of many computing departments (even in Universities, to their shame), if you mount R on a Unix system (including Linux) then there are no real Y2K issues - there is a Y2038 issue that will be solved by the 8 byte counter. This is because Unix/Linux maintains it's system time independently of the hardware, currently in a 4 byte counter of seconds since 1970. The hardware clock is only used to compare times at shutdown/startup and by the clock -w instruction which resets it from system time.> Is it a big issue to put such a statement in R? or this has legal implications > that R do not want as a "free" software? >Well one great advantage of R is that you can send them the source code so they can look for themselves. Try that with other products.> If possible I would like to see the statement on both Unix AND Win version > of R so I can ask them to "officially install" R on the labs machines. >See above re Unix. But presumably they haven't mounted some very well known packages from Microsoft that are not yet Y2K compliant the last time I looked at their web site. Good luck with your quest.> Mai Z > > mai at ms.uky.edu > http://www.ms.uky.edu/~mai/ > > -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- > r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html > Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" > (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch > _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._ >-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._