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 clusters (starting with I-cluster). The initial purpose was to develop a software in a very pragmatic way, with only features actually found useful, and hopefully lighter that the software 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 on, however, the legend wants that people realized that OAR is also the initial letters of one of the software fathers: Olivier Auguste Richard.