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I know this is not precisely a programming question, but I don't where else to ask...

S-PLUS was aquired by TIBCO some years ago. And it was seemingly included to the Spotfire product. However I installed the demo version of Spotfire and can't find anything indicating that S-PLUS is anymore part of it.

So my question is: is S-PLUS dead? And is there any way to install a prior version of it? I know R has totally taken over, but I'd be curious to just try it out if it is available somewhere.

Jason V
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  • AFAIK, you can't buy S-PLUS any more, and old versions don't appear to be available on tibco.com. Have you tried hunting for an S-PLUS torrent? Or contacting tibco support? – Richie Cotton Mar 15 '15 at 07:50
  • Thanks for the feedback, I haven't tried that yet but that's a good idea! – Jason V Mar 15 '15 at 09:29

1 Answers1

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Not sure how relevant the question is but here are my $0.02:

  • Yes, R has won.

  • TIBCO still seems to have a Spotfire product mentioning S-Plus (pdf found via simple Google search).

  • IIRC, years ago TIBCO purchased the commercial S license, but it turns out that nobody really wanted S-Plus if it was not entirely compatible with R.

  • TIBCO learned that lesson and built an entirely new R-compatible engine they call TERR; the jury is still out as to whether it will ever get any significant traction.

In the end, it is rather difficult to beat a well-maintained and written Open Source product---and R is one of the better examples of Open Source done right.

Dirk Eddelbuettel
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  • Yes as I mentionned in my question, I installed the Spotfire software but it seems all traces of S-PLUS disappeared from it. Their documentation is either not up-to-date, or they still use it in the background without any possibility for the user to see/interact with the code. I wasn't aware of TERR though, curious to see where that will lead. Thx for the info. – Jason V Mar 15 '15 at 09:28