Posit – Why RStudio Is Changing Its Name

RStudio has officially announced a name change from RStudio to Posit. 

Why did RStudio change its name to Posit?

For the past few years, Posit (formerly RStudio) has been shifting from R-exclusive tooling to a language agnostic ecosystem. Much to our enjoyment, we’ve seen the RStudio IDE grow to be more Python-friendly and the Posit data science ecosystem become “A Single Home for R & Python.”

The name that was synonymous with open source R development is re-branding to represent the business as a whole better. 

So, what does this mean for RStudio product users? Well, besides a brighter future filled with more capabilities – not much in the short-term. There will be a rebranding of tools and commercial products:

• RStudio Connect = Posit Connect
• RStudio Workbench = Posit Workbench
• RStudio Package Manager = Posit Package Manager

But overall, Posit will not be shifting away from R. So don’t worry, RStudio IDE will still be around and the leaders in open source R development aren’t slowing down.

In a press release by Sharon Machlis, Hadley Wickham, RStudio’s chief scientist, was quoted as saying, “We’re not pivoting from R to Python.” 

Hadley put us all at ease by continuing, “..I’m not going to stop writing R code” and later declaring “I’m not going to learn Python.”

And although RStudio is looking to balance out the share of engineers working on R with other development over time, the majority of work will remain R-related. 

What is Posit?

Posit, PBC is the new corporate name of the company formerly known as RStudio, PBC. It is a rebranding that reflects the expansion into Python and VS Code, among other things. 

The new name opens up the company to step out of its surficial typecasting as an R-only company. Posit can continue to grow the RStudio IDE while moving out of its beloved shadow that cemented ‘RStudio’ as the premier R IDE.

With the rebranding, Posit is moving faster toward what RStudio was already well on its way to becoming: 

The bridge to better data science.

With a new name and tantalizing plans for the future, that bridge is open for expansion and here at Appsilon, we are so excited. 

Posit’s services and commercial software are still the same, powerful tools as before; with the same support for more than just R. If your enterprise is looking to scale up and build better data products, Posit is the answer. 

P.S. — If you missed the rstudio::conf(2022) keynote from Joe Cheng, check out Shiny for Python. Or is it P/Shiny for all you R/Shiny users? 😉

Contact Appsilon, a Posit (RStudio) Certified Partner and reseller to learn more.