Is RapidMiner actually being maintained?

Arjan_SA

Hi,
It occurs to me that many issues described in this forum 6 to 8 years ago, still exist in RapidMiner. Even for issues on which was promised to be solved. Even for simple issues like misleading documentation.

For example: In April 2018, a question was asked about the file layout for the Stem (Dictionary) object. The answer was that the documentation was misleading, as there should be no spaces around the colon. 
However, this is what I read in the current RapidMiner version for this object: "The file must contain a rule per line: targetExpression : patter1 patter2 ...". Hence, still spaces around the colon.
(By The way: this layout does not work for multiple patterns, it does when each pattern gets its own line......)

This makes me wonder if RapidMiner is actually still under active maintenance, or that maintenance has been stopped?

sgenzer

hi @Arjan_SA so the short answer is yes, RapidMiner is being maintained. We have a large engineering team that is constantly working on updates, new features, and so forth. You may notice that we are in a beta phase for RapidMiner 9.2 and we release new versions several times a year. In fact both Gartner and Forrester have rated us as a leader in the machine learning software class for several years running now.

That is not to say that every bug report or feature request is acted upon. No software company does this - it's just not economically feasible. I could point out a plethora of similar issues in Microsoft Word - and that's Microsoft. So yes there are issues reported 6-8 years ago that may still exist - fringe issues that occur once in a blue moon for 1-2 users a week. Your question is one of those. It's a very small issue with an easy workaround.

Scott

sgenzer

hi again @Arjan_SA sorry I forgot to mention that you are always welcome to review the release notes and see what we have done. They are all open and public:

RM Studio 9.1.0
RM Studio 9.0.3
RM Studio 9.0.2

RM Server 9.1.0
RM Server 9.0.3
RM Server 9.0.2

RM Radoop 9.1.0
RM Radoop 9.0.2

And so on.

Scott

sgenzer

hi @Arjan_SA so the short answer is yes, RapidMiner is being maintained. We have a large engineering team that is constantly working on updates, new features, and so forth. You may notice that we are in a beta phase for RapidMiner 9.2 and we release new versions several times a year. In fact both Gartner and Forrester have rated us as a leader in the machine learning software class for several years running now.

That is not to say that every bug report or feature request is acted upon. No software company does this - it's just not economically feasible. I could point out a plethora of similar issues in Microsoft Word - and that's Microsoft. So yes there are issues reported 6-8 years ago that may still exist - fringe issues that occur once in a blue moon for 1-2 users a week. Your question is one of those. It's a very small issue with an easy workaround.

Scott

sgenzer

hi again @Arjan_SA sorry I forgot to mention that you are always welcome to review the release notes and see what we have done. They are all open and public:

RM Studio 9.1.0
RM Studio 9.0.3
RM Studio 9.0.2

RM Server 9.1.0
RM Server 9.0.3
RM Server 9.0.2

RM Radoop 9.1.0
RM Radoop 9.0.2

And so on.

Scott

Arjan_SA

Thanks for your clear answer, @sgenzer. I saw a new version come by last week, which said enough.... 

Too bad (for me) though that I appear to be one of those blue moon users......

sgenzer

thanks, @Arjan_SA. Yes sometimes it's frustrating when you are one of those blue moon users. If it makes you feel better, I am often in the same position! In all seriousness, that's why we're an open-source package with an SDK for those that want to extend the package in some edge use case direction. 

Scott