If potential customers/users see two products as competing, well, in that
sense they *are* competing, even if the producers of those products do not
orient to the competition. Not orienting to the competition may mean the
producer does not care what happens, but that does not mean that potential
users are not comparing the products and selecting one or the other, or,
less likely, both.
Take care.
Sam
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007, Robert Duval wrote:
> > I think you can actually spend more money on commercial documentation
> > for R than you would get if you bought the Stata documentation. I'm
> > sorry I don't have an AIC or BIC for that comparison.
> >
> > :)
> >
> > -Dave
>
>
> I am a Stata and R user, and i am on both mailing lists (which means I
> have to delete tons of crap from my email every day!).
>
> While I recently defended Stata manuals on the R-list, I have to say I
> disagree with your cost assessment (quoted above).
>
> It is true that if you buy the core R books you'll probably spend more
> $ than buying the full Stata documentation set. The difference
> however, is that the contents in those books is quite stable and most
> likely you won't need to buy anything else after that, (i.e. you can
> figure out the updates made to R in the free online Documentation).
> With Stata you have to buy a new documentation set every new release
> (roughly every two years), at least if you want to be completely up to
> date (I agree that you can survive most of the times with manuals from
> the previously release). Once you account for that, the Stata
> documentation becomes waaay more costly.
>
> I like the Stata documentation, but it drives me nuts that they don't
> have an electronic version of it. I'm ok if Stata Corp wants to make $
> and charge a lot for their manuals... but I think life would be much
> better if they sell a CD version of the manuals too. If you move
> around a lot, having to carry with you the documentation set is
> literally impossible.
>
> btw. I thought as curious Maarten's characterization of R as Stata's
> "competitor". While both software offer somewhat similar products, I
> think the R community is too self-involved to see themselves as
> "competing with Stata". For the most part I would say they don't care
> as to what goes on in Stataland.
>
> robert
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