OAR was first developed back in 2003, when people of the Laboratoire ID (Grenoble, France) decided to take control over the batch scheduler used to managed the lab's cluster (I-cluster). The initial purpose was to develop a software in a very pragmatic way, with only feature actually useful for them, and hopefully lighter that the one used so far: PBS.

As a result, when time came to choose a name, some people proposed OAR, in reference to HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey) fictional twin and one-letter shift of IBM.

Later however, the legend want that people also realised that OAR is also the initial letters of one of the software fathers: Olivier Auguste Richard.