[R-sig-finance] R vs. S-PLUS

[Gary Cable]

Sounds like the story of Insightful as well because of its roots in S... I
agree that we should work closely together when it comes to thought
leadership. My job is to make Insightful a successful commercial player in
financial statistics and more. I work closely with Eric and I'm sure he will
be interested in your ideas. 

Gary Cable

Senior Manager of Finance
Insightful Financial Products and Services
gcable at insightful.com 
Insightful Corporation
1700 Westlake Avenue North
Suite 500
Seattle, WA 98109-3044
USA



-----Original Message-----
From: Ajay Shah [mailto:ajayshah at mayin.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 9:51 PM
To: r-sig-finance at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R-sig-finance] R vs. S-PLUS

I am personally an R user, but I believe that one of the reasons which made
me more comfortable with R was that under certain states of nature, I could
drop into a commercial version.

So far, I have generated no revenues for the firm :-) but I do believe that's
possible (under certain states of nature).

I think there's a powerful duality between free software and commercial
software in this kind of situation. I'm reminded of the time - long ago -
when a bunch of guys close to the Free Software Foundation created a company
named Cygnus which gave commercial support for GNU related software. The
company got bought out by Red Hat later
<http://news.com.com/2100-1001-232971.html?legacy=cnet> but it does serve to
illustrate the principle.

Similarly I see a nice duality between linux and solaris - firms can
delicately calibrate how much they want to use free software, and how much
they want commercial software. I think both have a role. I think both sides
benefit from working together.

  Example: in finance, date and time is of great importance, and right
    now, it looks like the two are diverging - R is going the its/zoo
    way, and S/finmetrics have done their own thing. It will be of
    benefit to both sides if a common free software library does
    datetime.

  Example: The Eric Zivot book is great - but it should have pitched
    higher, at becoming something like MASS. That, of course, requires
    a much richer set of public domain libraries, not proprietary
    libraries.

I have thus far had 0 interactions with S. I am actively using R and love it.
I am completely unpersuaded when arguments are made that S is technically
superior. But I do recognise a potential role for having commercial support
for R. Peering into the crystal ball, I expect that the creative and
intellectual part is best done in the free software community, and the
company will work best saying they are "a commercial supported R", instead of
saying they have proprietary code. They can perhaps be like a stable release,
and R can be risk-taking.

-- 
Ajay Shah                                                   Consultant
ajayshah at mayin.org                      Department of Economic Affairs
http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah           Ministry of Finance, New Delhi

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