[R] Hearsay -- was R vs SAS

[John C Nash]

I would ask contributors to this list to at least note that the sort of FUD (Fear
Uncertainty and Doubt) of the type mentioned by the poster is hearsay. Do we have any
contractual promises from SAS Inc. or other companies that they will guarantee their
software? Have there been documented compensation payments? If so, then that is
information that should be provided, rather than "someone said to someone and they told
their dog and he barked to me that ...."

Perhaps someone from Revolution can comment (and maybe provide documentation) if they
provide a warranty or insurance for their implementation of R. Warranties and insurance
for open source are not unknown:

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/How-to-use-open-source-with-confidence
http://news.cnet.com/2100-7344_3-5143326.html

Another aspect to this hearsay issue is the pricing for commercial software. I happened to
see the invoice for SAS for a single, albeit powerful, laptop that was about $90,000 per
year. But I have yet to find a published price list for SAS, nor for many commercial
packages, and I cannot document what I saw. At least I can give you the price of R, though
I always am careful to tell potential users that it is not without cost -- you really do
have to join the community if you want to be a true R user.

This is not a gripe about SAS or other commercial software vendors, whose pricing and
service strategies are rightly their own choice, even if we dislike them. It is a
commentary that we, who work in the Free/Libre software should not assist those strategies
by promoting unsubstantiated opinions that work against us.

Given how email works, the poster may in fact disagree with the opinion he communicated,
and was trying to alert the community to such views. I just want to note that, as a
community, we need to be alert not to accept FUD for fact.

John Nash



On 08/08/2012 12:39 AM, r-help-request at r-project.org wrote:
> Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 22:46:25 -0400
> From: Kjetil Halvorsen <kjetilbrinchmannhalvorsen at gmail.com>
> To: r-help <r-help at r-project.org>
> Subject: [R] R versus SAS
> Message-ID:
> 	<CACU_Y08AEDjquzgaUcHdGirY8c2B6USnH+dxaERxmW+8acbWYg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> I found this on CrossValidated:
> 
> "A medical statistician once told me, that they use SAS because if
> they make mistakes due to software bugs and it comes to lawsuits, SAS
> will recompensate them. R comes without warranty."
> 
> Kjetil