I thought this summary of Alfresco's commercial-open source position (via Matt Asay) was an excellent encapsulation of the benefits commercial companies can offer to open-source projects. Since the Alfresco model is much the same as the REvolution model vis à vis R, this line in particular resonated for me:
Enterprise subscriptions fund the continued improvements to the community edition. That’s a huge benefit for community users. Bugs are fixed, new features are added.
Alfresco Community News: The Case for Community Involvement with Commercial Open Source
Hi Dave,
Unfortunately, I don't think revolution (with products like the 64-bit windows port) can be compared with the others take a dual-license approach cited in that article (MySQL, alfresco, redHat). These companies give substantial improvements to paid users (be it in service, bug-fixes, or features), and give back to the community as well. While Revo scores very high in community involvement, it fails to fulfill the "substantial improvements". Anyone using the 64-bit windows port would sooner of later feel that they are a world behind in terms of support (no, the advice in the R-help list will not apply since revo 64 uses a different toolchain), and features (lots of important packages are nowhere to be seen).
So in summary, windows 64 users do miss a lot of the R advantages, even after paying for a license.
Posted by: J | July 23, 2009 at 01:16