[R] R licensing query

[Prof. John C Nash]

I think that Marc S. has provided some of the better refs. for R and its usage in
commercial and organizational settings.

However, the kinds of bloody-minded "We're going to insist you use inappropriate software
because we are idiots" messages are not news to many of us. Duncan points out that R has
"Absolutely no warranty", but unlike Excel, you are allowed to comment on it. It is very
clear to some of us that the IT folk who like to use Microsoft software in a mindless way
have never read the EULA or asked their legal advisors about its lack of warranty AND the
fact you are not permitted to warn your friends in reviews or opinions, at least if you
keep to the EULA.. Fortunately, there are people who do try to provide warnings. I
recommend The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group http://eusprig.org/ especially
their horror stories -- were talking big money here. They've been going a while. I
participated in the 2003, 2004 and 2005 conferences, but finally decided I'd have more
success convincing people to use R than to use spreadsheets responsibly. Eric Neuwirth and
Thomas Baier have some R-Excel interfaces that take a different approach that is interesting.

As a tangential approach, are your IT folk willing to offer virtual machines? In our
Telfer School setup, the orthodoxy is strongly Win-obsessed, but it turns out there were
some applications powerful folk needed that use Linux etc.  VMWare was the chosen
solution, and it allowed me to have my own Ubuntu setup. I'm happy not to be bothered with
all the virus checking and install controls of the central system, and the IT folk aren't
worried I'll cause trouble for them either. My machine cannot send email outside the local
domain (to control spam forwarding), but that is a pretty minor issue.

JN