R help - Dec 2001 - Paid support for R?

Dear R users,

Sorry if this has been discussed before.

I was recently looking at the MySQL site and saw that they offer various levels 
of paid support. The support options range from basic email support (USD200) 
through to extensive telephone support from the development team (USD10000). 
These are annual prices.

This is something I would be happy to see available with R (maybe it is?). My 
experiences with the mailing list have been excellent - I've received a host
of
very helpful responses in no time at all. Novices like I am can't hope to
help
others to the extent that the present contributors do, but something we could 
do is help support those who do offer expert help.

This is what appears at http://www.mysql.org/support/original/basic.html:

"Basic e-mail support is a very inexpensive support option and should be 
thought of more as a way to support our development of MySQL than as a real 
support option. We at MySQL do give a lot of free support in all the different 
MySQL lists, and the money we get from basic e-mail support is largely used to 
make this possible."

I don't know about the mechanics of implementing this, but I presume it has 
worked for MySQL. I would be very interested in the opinions of users and 
developers alike about the merits of this idea. Thank you!


Regards,


Andrew C. Ward

CAPE Centre
Department of Chemical Engineering
The University of Queensland
Brisbane Qld 4072 Australia
andreww at cheque.uq.edu.au
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At 08:16 12/12/01 +1000, "Andrew C. Ward" <s195404 at
student.uq.edu.au> wrote:
>Dear R users,
>
>Sorry if this has been discussed before.
>
>I was recently looking at the MySQL site and saw that they offer various 
>levels
>of paid support. The support options range from basic email support (USD200)
>through to extensive telephone support from the development team (USD10000).
>These are annual prices.
>
>This is something I would be happy to see available with R (maybe it is?).
I think this proposal is at odds with what I understood to be the 
fundamental theme behind the development of R - a community of scientists 
sharing knowledge without attempts to shut up 'intellectual property' 
behind walls, lawyers etc.  If people feel grateful perhaps they could give 
time, build something, and contribute it to the community.  I expect the 
'consultancy rates' for many of those who freely give advice on R-help 
would make anyone on an academic budget wince ... and that is the rate they 
should charge if they are providing service for a fee.

The structure of 'open source' and the use of the academic and
scientific
community is a good one, set up with considerable hindsight over ways in 
which short-term greed, proprietary methods and intellectual property law 
had done a disservice to the community which generated the ideas and 
methods.  If ever income is derived from R then I expect the system will 
collapse as people will soon come to spend that income, then they will 
spend it in anticipation, at which point they will need to generate the 
income ... and collegiality will disappear,


Richard Rowe
Senior Lecturer
Department of Zoology and Tropical Ecology, James Cook University
Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia
fax (61)7 47 25 1570
phone (61)7 47 81 4851
e-mail: Richard.Rowe at jcu.edu.au
http://www.jcu.edu.au/school/tbiol/zoology/homepage.html

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