[R] R != S-Plus

Marc Feldesman feldesmanm at pdx.edu
Wed Oct 3 21:21:45 CEST 2001


David Brahm's initial post seems to me to be filled with a mixture of bugs, 
wants, and needs coupled with a desire to "make" R become S-Plus.  David, 
if S-Plus works for you, why are you bothering to convert all your code to 
R?  No one has ever asserted that R==S (or S-Plus), and there is no reason 
to expect this equality to hold, ever.

R is open source.  If you want to change something, you are free to change 
it and you are free to contribute your changes to the community.  If you 
want to find and fix a bug, I'm sure the r-development team would welcome 
your assistance.  (BTW, it has never been difficult for me to figure out 
how or where to report problems and concerns.  Indeed it isn't in the FAQs 
- and maybe it should - but anyone with a reasonable amount of 
inquisitiveness could figure it out.)

Yelling at the developers is a no win strategy.  They're not obliged to do 
anything, including fixing bugs.  They do it voluntarily and most of us 
genuinely appreciate the incredibly hard work they do.  I'm not an 
R-developer -- just a very grateful consumer -- but my standard response to 
ungrateful people is to do less for them, not more.

Peter's response may have seemed "unfair", but it was needed IMHO.

My 2 cents.









=====================
Dr. Marc R. Feldesman
Professor and Chairman
Anthropology Department
Portland State University
1721 SW Broadway
Portland, Oregon 97201
email:  feldesmanm at pdx.edu
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fax:    503-725-3905
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======================

"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society.
If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people
for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of
power."   P.J. O'Rourke

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