Neelie Kroes, while antitrust commissioner for the EU, said, “In the current economic context, all companies are looking for cost-effective IT solutions. Systems based on open-source software are increasingly emerging as viable alternatives to proprietary solutions.” Stephan Kolassa and Rob Hyndman provide their evaluation of whether R, an open-source statistical computing environment, can be used for forecasting. They compare it favorably to professionally produced and quality-controlled commercial software. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2010