Contributions to the R Project

The R Project would not exist without the contributions of the R Core Group, the 21 volunteer statisticians and computer scientists from around the world who have donated their time and expertise to create the R langauge, its core packages, and manage its regular release and binary distribution process via the CRAN network. Many Core Group members also tirelessly support R users via r-help and the other mailing lists — Brian Ripley in particular deserves special mention.

Around the core group has formed an ecosystem of R enthusiasts and developers who contribute to the project in other ways. Package developers, especially, provide the vast richness of capabilities that are possible with R. Today, there are more than 3100 packages available on CRAN, plus an additional 500 from the BioConductor project and numerous others on independent forges and websites. Thanks in no small part to the design choices of the R Core Group that have made it so easy to contribute R packages, this ecosystem continues to thrive with new packages being created at an exponential rate.

Our success at Revolution Analytics is tied to the continued success of the R project, and in addition to our commercial distribution of R we also aim to support to R ecosystem as a whole. Blogger Ajay Ohri has listed some of Revolution's contributions to the R Project: open-source packages, funding for conferences and user groups, support of the R community and more (like student funding). Check out his full post at the link below. 

DecisionStats: Contribution to #Rstats by Revolution