Linux Foundation Announces R Consortium to Support Millions of Users Around the World

Data scientists from industry and academic research will work together to advance world’s most popular language for analytics and data science and support the rapid growth of the R user community

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., June 30, 2015 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced the R Consortium. This new organization will strengthen both the technical and user communities as a Collaborative Project hosted at Linux Foundation.

The R language is used by statisticians, analysts and data scientists to unlock value from data. It is a free and open source programming language for statistical computing and provides an interactive environment for data analysis, modeling and visualization. The R Consortium will complement the work of the R Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Austria that maintains the language. The R Consortium will focus on user outreach and other projects designed to assist the R user and developer communities.

Founding companies and organizations of the R Consortium include The R Foundation, Platinum members Microsoft and RStudio; Gold member TIBCO Software Inc.; and Silver members Alteryx, Google, HP, Mango Solutions, Ketchum Trading and Oracle.

“Millions of data scientists and academic researchers use R language every day and want to collaborate with their peers to share visualization and analysis techniques,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “The R Consortium will promote the sharing of ideas and accelerate findings that make R even better for business, research and academic purposes.”

The R user community is vibrant with local user groups organized all over the world. The R Consortium will work with this user community and the R Foundation to amplify and focus the impact of this global community in order to advance the project for all users and developers, including millions more in the coming years.

“This is a great opportunity to harness the power of the thriving R user community around the globe and advance the R language for everyone,” said John Chambers on behalf of the R Foundation Board. “The R Consortium will provide vital funding support for R services and development, made possible by the Linux Foundation’s proven track record of bringing large-scale communities together. We are looking forward to working with both organizations.”

The open governance model for R Consortium includes an infrastructure steering committee that will direct technical decisions and oversee working group projects and a board of directors to guide business decisions.

R Consortium is a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project and complements other data-oriented collaboration activities hosted by the organization. For example, the recently announced Apache: Big Data conference gathers the leading infrastructure projects that make up a Big Data computing environment. 

R Consortium is a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project. Collaborative Projects are independently supported software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. By spreading the collaborative DNA of the largest collaborative software development project in history, The Linux Foundation provides the essential collaborative and organizational framework so project hosts can focus on innovation and results. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects span the enterprise, mobile, embedded and life sciences markets and are backed by many of the largest names in technology. For more information about Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects, please visit: http://collabprojects.linuxfoundation.org/

For more information about R Consortium, please visit: http://www.r-consortium.org

Comments from Members

Alteryx
“Alteryx is excited to be a founding member of the R Consortium as it will provide a forum to support the R user community and extend collaboration across the developer community,” said Dan Putler, Chief Scientist, Alteryx. “The consortium will further our goal of providing access to R-based advanced analytics to the broadest range and type of users.”

Google

“We’ve got over a thousand Googlers using R, and it is critical to many projects,” said Tim Hesterberg, Senior Quantitative Analyst, Google. “We love that it is open source, so we can connect to our internal data processing tools. We’re happy to support the R infrastructure as part of the R Consortium.”

Ketchum Trading

“R is a critical component of our quantitative financial modeling environment, and Ketchum Trading is thrilled to be a founding member of the R Consortium and assist the world-wide user base by contributing to industrial-strength collaboration and support to the R community,” said Petri Fast, COO, Ketchum Trading.

Mango Solutions

“Mango Solutions has been helping customers to leverage R in a commercial environment for over a decade. The R Consortium represents a vital step change, enabling more enterprises to adopt this excellent technology, and Mango Solutions is proud and excited to be involved in this exciting new chapter as a founder member,” said Matt Aldridge, CEO, Mango Solutions.

Microsoft

“The R Consortium will support the R community by helping companies that rely on R — and their data scientists and developers — to work together to answer some of today’s most complex technology and research questions,” said David Smith, R Community Lead, Microsoft. “We’re excited to galvanize this initiative as a founding member.”

RStudio

“Millions of people use R every day. It is the natural time to provide this global community with dedicated support to amplify their work and drive collaborative opportunities with the developer community,” said J.J. Allaire, RStudio’s CEO and Founder. “We’re excited to be at the forefront of this important work.”

Oracle

“Data science is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in business, science, and technology, where the R language and ecosystem is a major enabling force,” said Neil Mendelson, Vice President, Big Data and Advanced Analytics, Oracle  “The R Consortium is an important enabling body to support and help grow the R user community, which increasingly includes enterprise data scientists.”

TIBCO Software Inc

“Data scientists use R to drive business decisions. The community needs the infrastructure in place to accelerate this critical work, and the R Consortium does exactly that,” said Brian Gentile, Senior Vice President and General Manager of TIBCO Analytics, TIBCO Software, Inc. “We’re looking forward to this collaboration and are excited to be among the founding members.”

About the R Consortium

The R Consortium is a 501(c)6 nonprofit organization and Linux Foundation Collaborative Project dedicated to the support and growth of the R user community. The R Consortium works with and provides support to the R Foundation and other organizations developing, maintaining and distributing R software and provides a unifying framework for the R user community.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux and collaborative software development. Founded in 2000, the organization sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and promotes, protects and advances the Linux operating system and collaborative software development by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source community. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral forum for collaboration and education by hosting Collaborative Projects, Linux conferences including LinuxCon, and generating original research and content that advances the understanding of Linux and collaborative software development. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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