On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 6:17 PM, John Chambers <j...@r-project.org> wrote: > The Wikipedia statement may be a bit misleading. > > S was never open source. Source versions would only have been available with > a nondisclosure agreement, and relatively few copies would have been > distributed in source. There was a small but valuable "beta test" network, > mainly university statistics departments.
So it was free (or at least distribution cost only), but with a nondisclosure agreement? Did binaries circulate freely, legally or otherwise? Okay, guess I'll read the book. I'm sure I saw S source early in my career (1990 or so), possibly on an early Sun 3/60 system or even the on-the-way-out Whitechapel MG-1 workstations. > And two shameless plugs: > > 1. there is a chapter on the history of all this in my forthcoming book on > "Extending R" That will sit nicely on the shelf next to "Extending The S System" that Allan Wilks gave me :) > PS: somehow "historical" would be less unnerving than "archeological" At least I didn't say palaeontological. Thanks for the response. Barry ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
