Free and open-source software (FOSS) is computer software that can be classified as both free software and open source software which means anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.

R is one such Free and open source statistical software and R is gaining a lot of popularity in the recent times. It is receiving acceptance by analytic community worldwide.

R is very well accepted globally because of two of its important attributes viz. the ability to transform and to evolve. Whenever new statistical analysis techniques are discovered, they now emerge as R packages first, well before they are incorporated in conventional software.

Brief History of R

R was first implemented by Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka, both faculty members at the University of Auckland, in the early 1990’s. Robert and Ross established R as an open source project in 1995. Since 1997 the R project has been managed by the R Core Group. R 1.0.0 was released in February 2000. This team regularly oversees changes and implementations of new R features as well as provide support for R users.