[R] RE: system.time(), sys.time() etc

Friedrich.Leisch@ci.tuwien.ac.at
Thu, 26 Feb 2004 22:39:43 -0000

>>>>> On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 10:08:36 -0500,
>>>>> Liaw, Andy (LA) wrote:

  >> From: Spencer Graves [mailto:spencer.graves at pdf.com]
  >>
  >> Martin says, "This is another instance of S-Plus following R
  >> behind and doing it incompatibly [with a reason?] ... ."
  >>
  >> This is one example of a major issue in "how to wage and win a
  >> standards war", discussed by Shapiro and Varian (1998)
  >> Information Rules
  >> (Harvard Business School Press).  Whether you're Bill Gates or
Larry
  >> Ellison, you want to make it easy for people to move to your product
  >> from a competitor but expensive for your current customers to
  >> escape to
  >> the competition.
  >>
  >> Spencer Graves

  > But I believe neither Insightful nor R-core would want to see each other
as
  > competitor.  (Reality might be quite different.)  It would not be in the
  > best interest of either party.

  > (Apologies for putting words in R-Core's mouth.  As for Insightful,
at least
  > that's David Smith's word when he talked about `Future of
S-PLUs' at the
  > 2002 Insightful Technology Conference.)


I never saw R about trying to be a competition or replacement for
Splus, in fact many of us in R Core think that it is an advantage for
R that there also is a commercially supported version of S. I
personally would rather like to see if S (i.e. R and Splus combined)
gain market share at the cost of certain other statistical software
packages (e.g., ones matching the regular expression S..?S :-)

Best,
Fritz