[R] Paid support for R?

[Roger Peng]

It's perhaps a bit strong to say that "this proposal is at odds with...the
fundamental theme behind the development of R." As far as I know, no where
is it stated that you can't make money off of R.  The fundamental problem
in the world of proprietary software is the lack of sharing ---
improvements are made to software which are NOT shared with the community.  
I'm assuming that the GNU GPL was chosen for R in order to prevent this
kind of non-sharing anti-social behavior.  The GPL forces developers to
share their improvements with the community.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with people making a few
bucks off of R, especially if that encourages them to make improvements
from which we can all benefit.

-roger
_______________________________
UCLA Department of Statistics
rpeng at stat.ucla.edu
http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~rpeng

On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Richard Rowe wrote:

> 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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