As an end-user, I wonder about Revolution R. Is the relationship
between Revolution R and the R community at-large a positive one? Do
the former contribute to the development efforts of the latter? Is
there a competitive aspect? is their forum competitive with r-help?
any other thoughts? (most of all, I simply hope that they help some
of the many helpful experts on this forum, who have volunteered their
expertise to help me so many times.)
as for me, I discovered Revolution a few days ago. they did not have
an OSX enterprise version, so I downloaded the community version.
alas, after installation, starting up their GUI interface, I
immediately get
Error in library(Revobase) : there is no package called 'Revobase'
I tried to sign up for their forum, but the forum email responder
seems to be dead. (I sent them an email, but have not heard back
yet.) someone else here tried out their enterprise version on a linux
machine, but it had ugly problems in the creation of the top-level
Makefile. so, my initial impression is not overwhelming. are they
for real?
regards,
/iaw
----
Ivo Welch (ivo.welch at brown.edu, ivo.welch at gmail.com)
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 8:08 AM, ivo welch <ivowel at gmail.com> wrote:> As an end-user, I wonder about Revolution R. ?Is the relationship > between Revolution R and the R community at-large a positive one? ?Do > the former contribute to the development efforts of the latter? ?Is > there a competitive aspect? ?is their forum competitive with r-help? > any other thoughts? ?(most of all, I simply hope that they help some > of the many helpful experts on this forum, who have volunteered their > expertise to help me so many times.)I'm from Revolution (as of last week, newly rechristened Revolution Analytics) -- I've been with them for almost two years, and involved with R, S and ESS for a long time before that. We intend for the relationship between Revolution and the community is a positive one -- the R community is one of the things that makes R so great. We've made positive contributions: we've released a number of open-source R packages to the community (including "foreach" and "doMC"), contributed fixes to the core R engine, we've launched and sponsor several R User Groups to foster local R communities (mainly in the US, so far), we sponsor student projects in R, fund R conferences (including UseR!) and personally I've been active in evangelizing the wonders of R to the statistics community in general (at our blog, blog.revolutionanalytics.com, and in the media, such as last year's New York Times article). The forums aren't intended to compete with this list, but provide a venue for Revolution-specific discussions which might be out-of-place on this list. (Sorry about the technical difficulties you're having -- Sherry from support is following up with you as I write this.) In the same way, our new community site inside-R.org isn't intended to compete with other R community sites but to promote the best content (read more here: http://bit.ly/c6v80J ). Overall, our goal is to support and grow the R community everywhere (while selling subscriptions for Revolution R in commercial organizations). Yes, it's the real deal. # David Smith -- David M Smith <david at revolutionanalytics.com> VP of Marketing, Revolution Analytics http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com Tel: +1 (650) 330-0553 x205 (Palo Alto, CA, USA)
Hi Iaw (or Ivo ?!), I have seen REvolution in useR 2009. I personally know one of the students they sponsored once, and have been following David Smith's (great) online work for over a year now. REvolution is real, and I hope they (and more companies like them) will flourish in the future. I agree with Duncan that finding the balance between open-source community and paid company employers can be a tricky game to play. But it seems to me that REvolution (and especially David Smith), have been doing not bad at all. I hope that other R based companies, like: - R+ <http://www.experience-rplus.com/> from XL Solutions. - RStat <http://random-technologies-llc.com/products/RStat/rstat> - S-PLUS <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-PLUS> Would have acted more in a similar way. (And if they do, I didn't know about it and would like to have been more informed) Best, Tal ----------------Contact Details:------------------------------------------------------- Contact me: Tal.Galili@gmail.com | 972-52-7275845 Read me: www.talgalili.com (Hebrew) | www.biostatistics.co.il (Hebrew) | www.r-statistics.com (English) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 6:08 PM, ivo welch <ivowel@gmail.com> wrote:> As an end-user, I wonder about Revolution R. Is the relationship > between Revolution R and the R community at-large a positive one? Do > the former contribute to the development efforts of the latter? Is > there a competitive aspect? is their forum competitive with r-help? > any other thoughts? (most of all, I simply hope that they help some > of the many helpful experts on this forum, who have volunteered their > expertise to help me so many times.) > > as for me, I discovered Revolution a few days ago. they did not have > an OSX enterprise version, so I downloaded the community version. > alas, after installation, starting up their GUI interface, I > immediately get > Error in library(Revobase) : there is no package called 'Revobase' > I tried to sign up for their forum, but the forum email responder > seems to be dead. (I sent them an email, but have not heard back > yet.) someone else here tried out their enterprise version on a linux > machine, but it had ugly problems in the creation of the top-level > Makefile. so, my initial impression is not overwhelming. are they > for real? > > regards, > > /iaw > > ---- > Ivo Welch (ivo.welch@brown.edu, ivo.welch@gmail.com) > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 4:08 PM, ivo welch <ivowel at gmail.com> wrote:> As an end-user, I wonder about Revolution R. ?Is the relationship > between Revolution R and the R community at-large a positive one? ?Do > the former contribute to the development efforts of the latter? ?Is > there a competitive aspect? ?is their forum competitive with r-help? > any other thoughts? ?(most of all, I simply hope that they help some > of the many helpful experts on this forum, who have volunteered their > expertise to help me so many times.)It seems to me that Revolution Analytics are doing an awful lot of good things for giving R a corporate voice, and are developing a lot of stuff and releasing under Open Source licensing which is a good thing too. But... I really don't like the offer of free Revolution Enterprise R for academic use. It muddies the water of what is Free (as in beer) and Free (as in speech). It's bad enough that English only has the one word for the two concepts. As an academic, I don't use proprietary software not because it is expensive, but because if it's closed source and not freely redistributable then it's not a scientific tool. It becomes alchemical magick. It may be the philosopher's stone that turns your base data into analytical gold, but I can't examine it to see how it works, I can't give it to someone else, I can't make a copy of it. I would rather see RA charge a price for academic use, since that will make it clear that this is not Free (as in speech) software and will also make people read the small print on the contract. Although many people don't read the small print even when there is money involved: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/04/15/gamestation-we-own-your-soul/1 I've known Dave Smith for many years - we first met when he was in Lancaster. He was developing an Splus package for longitudinal data which, ironically, he released under the GPL while I was selling the Splus version of splancs for 60 pounds! Oh how we change! :) Barry