OAR was first developed back in 2003, when people of 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's fathers: Olivier Auguste Richard.