thank you, everybody, for enlightening me and others about the relationships involved. I hope Revolution R and other companies like it will succeed. I don't mind RR being free to academics---if nothing else, I like it for the fact that I can install RR without worry on a couple of different computers I own, and not have to worry about licenses. (this is why I do not like matlab.)
what I do hope for is compatibility---that is, if a program runs on RR, it should also run under R. maybe just having stubs that link to slower native facilities under standard R for anything RR does special would be good. IMHO, R would benefit from line numbers (for error messages and debugging, GUI preferably) and ubiquitous multithreading. then again, as far as I am concerned, the folks who are developing it are saints for having put together what they have put together. I hope that, if RR succeeds, they get to make a ton of $$s consulting, too. I also like the idea that people like myself, who are primarily end-users and thus benefit greatly, should pay at least some. this would be best done if all like me where to contribute. too much free-riding. I like the idea of "nag-ware"---if you have not paid and you are using the 64-bit package (rather than the 32-bit package), there could be a small sleep-time at startup and/or some nagging to donate $25 via paypal to the foundation. this reminds me---time to donate. I should do so through my research budget, but this is difficult when called a donation. I wish the foundation sold a few overpriced trinkets (or r-help support certificates or whatever) for me to run by our own university accounting system. they would see it strange otherwise if a tax-exempt organization (like Brown U) were to donate money to a non-tax-exempt institution (like the R foundation). /iaw ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.