[R] What is R?

[Diego Kuonen]

Dear all

there's something. that puzzles me about what R is :-)

   "R is available as Free Software under the terms of the Free 
    Software Foundation's GNU General Public License in source 
    code form."

(Source: http://www.r-project.org/about.html)

But, looking at the second paragraph of the same site, you
see this:

   "... and R provides an Open Source route to participation in
    that activity."

As we all know the term "open source" means something close 
(but not identical) to "free software". 

So, what is R?

It clearly seems to be "free software" and not only "open source" 
software, or?


Finally, Let's have a look at the following:

   "... This article describes why using the term ``open source'' does 
    not solve any problems, and in fact creates some. These are the reasons 
    why it is better to stick with ``free software.'' ... "

(Source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html )


I'm puzzled, are you?


Greets

  Diego


P.S.: What about "Omegahat"?


-- 
Diego Kuonen $\in$ Chairs of Statistics $\subset$ DMA \@ EPFL
http://stat.kuonen.com                  http://www.Statoo.com 
Q: How do I type "for i in *.dvi; do xdvi $i; done" in a GUI?  
/*      panic("esp: Aiee penguin on the SCSI-bus.");       */
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
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
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._