The Statisticians Workbench is a project that envisions creating a solution for good statistical analysis that can be used in a wide range of situations — but primarily in a way that does not demand a large set of upfront expertise from the user. Researchers and analysts can use the Workbench and its AI assistant components to perform very professional statistical analysis tasks without needing to be database experts, statisticians, or software developers.
It is built using well-proven libraries of data and statistical functions — the same battle-tested tools that professional data scientists rely on every day — wrapped in an interface that makes them accessible to domain experts in any field.
The Workbench follows an approach seen in other successful open source software: two tracks running in parallel, each strengthening the other.
A body of code that is open source and managed by a community of people who need this tool, or are simply interested in the issues it deals with. The community also includes people able to contribute and help refine the software because of their skills — developers, statisticians, data engineers, and domain experts working together.
A traditional commercial project that deals with aspects of software the corporate world needs: consulting, training, and deployment assistance. The commercial track will almost certainly create a specialised corporate-focused version and other tools tailored to enterprise environments.
The MIT license was chosen specifically to encourage this commercial track — giving organisations the confidence to build on the Workbench knowing they have the freedom to adapt and integrate it into their own environments without restrictive licensing constraints.