[R] Software lifecycle for R releases (aka practical limits of support for older versions)

[David M Smith]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 9:38 AM, Rowe, Brian Lee Yung (Portfolio
Analytics)<B_Rowe at ml.com> wrote:
> Hello useRs:
>
> Does anyone have thoughts on the lifecycle of older releases of R? I
> know that currently the 2.8.x and 2.9.x releases seem to be actively
> "supported" on the mailing lists, but what about older releases, say
> 2.4.x? Curious to hear when people think older versions of R become
> obsolete and unsupportable on the lists (or other venues).
>
> Regards,
> Brian

This is actually a fairly common question from R users at commercial
institutions, where for various reasons upgrading to the latest
release of R isn't always possible. This might be for regulatory
reasons (only a certain distribution of R has been validated), because
of IT policies, of because R is incorporated into a production
application where the risk of breaking the application outweighs the
potential benefits of an upgrade.

This is actually one of the main reasons why the release cycle for
REvolution R isn't as frequent as that for CRAN R. The beneficial side
effect is that we can therefore provide support for older versions of
R in our distributions. We support R 2.7.2 through our distribution of
REvolution R Enterprise, for example. More info here:
http://www.revolution-computing.com/products/revolution-enterprise.php

# David Smith

-- 
David M Smith <david at revolution-computing.com>
Director of Community, REvolution Computing www.revolution-computing.com
Tel: +1 (206) 577-4778 x3203 (San Francisco, USA)

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