[R] The hidden costs of GPL software?

[Peter Dalgaard]

"John Fox" <jfox at mcmaster.ca> writes:

> I don't think that
> it would be hard (although it would be time-consuming) to produce a much
> broader extension, but the result (in my opinion) would be as dubiously
> useful as the GUIs for SAS or S-PLUS. 

Strategically, that might actually be a valid (and valiant) design
goal! From my limited experience with Rcmdr and SAS Analyst, I'd say
that Rcmdr is almost there, just a few little niggles like not
remembering values from the last time a form was filled in.

> By the way, if there were something I
> could wish for here it would be a slightly broader set of Tk widgets to be
> included with the Tcl/Tk that installs with R for Windows, since using
> widgets outside of this set creates installation obstacles for lower-level
> users.

Argh. Please stop poking at my guilty conscience.... Wrapping Tcl/Tk
extensions as R packages has been on my wish list too for some time,
with tktable as the obvious first candidate. (It's not just on
Windows; the default Unix/Linux installs of Tcl/Tk tend to be pretty
minimal too. On Windows we have this instructive twist on the BSD/GPL
debacle, that ActiveState made a very nice Tcl/Tk distribution with
all sorts of "batteries included", but we cannot bundle it with R as
they are restricting redistribution.)


-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907