REvolution Computing, Ubuntu 9.10 - A mishandled opportunity

On Linux, R is a command line program. Whether or not this is a good thing or not is a separate issue. When R is started, a "greeting" is displayed before the R command prompt. Because it's only a few lines, it certainly doesn't delay start up and the message has traditionally been innocuous. However, users of Ubuntu 9.10 will notice an addition to the traditional R "greeting".

R version 2.9.2 (2009-08-24)
Copyright (C) 2009 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
ISBN 3-900051-07-0

R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.

R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
Type 'contributors()' for more information and
'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications.


This is REvolution R version 3.0.0:
the optimized distribution of R from REvolution Computing.
REvolution R enhancements Copyright (C) REvolution Computing, Inc.

Checking for REvolution MKL:
- REvolution R enhancements not installed.
For improved performance and other extensions: apt-get install revolution-r

For readers unfamiliar with the greeting message in R, I assure you that everything below the line starting with 'citation()' is new. This has sparked a rather interesting discussion on the Ubuntu Forums - Link To Discussion.

As you can see from what I have written on the forum, I was immediately concerned but did not want to over-react. However, after hearing the various points of view that I have had access to, I have concluded that Canonical handled this poorly but I want to be very clear regarding where I feel there is a problem.

The section of the greeting regarding REvolution Computing's product is ad-ware. Not only is it ad-ware, the message is misleading. An inexperienced user could mistakenly read this and believe that their R installation is incomplete. Furthermore there is nothing in this message warning a user that part of the REvolution Computing system is proprietary. Although REvolution Computing has contributed several interesting extensions to the R community under an OSS license, the mkl extension is proprietary and would be installed by default if a user follows the recommendation of the new "greeting".

To sum up - I don't like the new greeting. I don't want to recreate the Ubuntu Forums discussion. I recommend you read the full discussion there.

Before closing this post, I do want to emphasize that I think REvolution Computing and Canonical are well within their rights to work together to offer this product to Ubuntu users. In fact, it makes good sense for these companies to work together to offer a modern, comprehensive statistics/BI solution to end-users. And I think it is perfectly OK for Canonical to help new users find the REvolution Computing extensions, but I don't think this should be done via the greeting in R.

The Karmic Koala introduced a new Application Center to Ubuntu. This replaced the Add/Remve Applications of past Ubuntu releases and will eventually also replace Synaptic on default installations. This application is intended to show case open source AND proprietary applications to Ubuntu users and I think that is 100% terrific. I LIKE options, provided the options come with full and reasonable disclosure. I think Canonical should develop a system so users installing R, PSPP, Gretl, etc. are able to easily find other potential solutions to their needs. This list should include REvolution Computing's product. Users should be able to easily see how popular these various programs are with other Ubuntu users. The license should also be obvious and not confusing. I think Open-Source and Proprietary are adequate. I don't think new users need to know the difference between the GPL, LGPL, Apache license, etc.

As you can see in the forum discussion, I did look on Launchpad and I found a bug report that is relevant to this discussion. You can find that bug report here. I hope that Canonical listens to the concerns of the community regarding this. Given the heated debate in the OSS community regarding technologies that fit into gray areas like Mono, this seems like a fight that Canonical and the community should work to resolve, rather than allow it to fester and turn into something like the Mono debate.

--andy