SAS version for Linux ?

[Marc Schwartz]

"Pittigher, Raymond  - CS" <Raymond.Pittigher at itt.com> writes:

> Yes there is. SAS (www.sas.com) and the S (www.insightful.com) along
> with open source R can be found on Linux.

Insightful was purchased by Tibco/Spotfire last year, with many of the
key tech support staff leaving the company. Bill Dunlap is about the
only familiar name left there.

There are some doubts as to the future of S-Plus as a stand alone
product versus becoming an analytic engine for some yet to be announced
application server. Such is the rumor mill...

The user base of S-Plus has deteriorated substantially over the years,
in large measure due to R and Insightful's own mis-steps. There was a
discussion last month on the r-help list subsequent to a recent NY Times
article that covered R. As a result, I posted some analyses of trends in
the posting volume on the S-Plus, R and SAS primary help e-mail
lists. That post is here if anyone is interested:

  https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2009-January/184196.html

There are PDF files with the relevant plots as attachments to the
post. Caution is urged in interpreting the data as representing a
possible figure for the size of the user base, as there are other fora
(including phone support) for SAS and S-Plus as commercial products. In
addition, over the past several years, some level of the traffic on
r-help, despite the notable growth, has moved to specialty lists for R
covering topics that are OS specific (Fedora, Debian, OSX) and subject
matter specific (finance, databases, mixed models, genetics, etc.).

Also, there are at least 3 companies that have announced commercially
supported versions of R, as a sign of R's growth and maturity. These
would be to R, what RH is to Fedora. I won't reference them here, as I
have no association with them. Google searches can locate them. If one
needs a commercial version of R, much as one might want RHEL in lieu of
Fedora, these companies might provide an option for you.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz