diff --git a/doc/newfeat.texi b/doc/newfeat.texi
index e4e4df6ff..6159d3221 100644
--- a/doc/newfeat.texi
+++ b/doc/newfeat.texi
@@ -150,6 +150,9 @@ init file. Users of the popular @code{use-package} Emacs package can
 now do @code{(use-package ess :defer t)} to take advantage of this
 behavior.
 
+@item @ESS{[R]} On remotes ESSR package is now fetched from github
+instead of a private site
+
 @item Commands that send the region to the inferior process now deal with rectangular regions.
 See the documentation of @code{ess-eval-region} for details. This only
 works on Emacs 25.1 and newer.
diff --git a/etc/ESSR.rds b/etc/ESSR.rds
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..31e59c951
Binary files /dev/null and b/etc/ESSR.rds differ
diff --git a/etc/ESSR/BUILDESSR b/etc/ESSR/BUILDESSR
index 536132b56..86a87dd72 100755
--- a/etc/ESSR/BUILDESSR
+++ b/etc/ESSR/BUILDESSR
@@ -2,17 +2,9 @@
 ## -*- mode: R -*-
 ## code to build ESSR environemnt.
 ## Assume that current directory is etc/ESSR
-## run "./BUILDESSR destdir" to create ESSR_<version>.rda in destdir
-## where <version>  is picked form ./VERSION file
-
-
-args <- commandArgs(TRUE)
-dir <- if(length(args)) args[[1]] else "."
-ver <- scan("./VERSION", what = "character", quiet = TRUE)
-rda_file <- sprintf("%s/ESSR_%s.rda", dir, ver)
+## run "./BUILDESSR" to create ../ESSR.rda
 
 ## exactly as in inferior-ess-r-load-ESSR in ess-r-d.el
 source('./R/.load.R', local=TRUE)
 ESSR <- load.ESSR('./R/')
-
-save(ESSR, file = rda_file)
+saveRDS(ESSR, file = "../ESSR.rds")
diff --git a/etc/ESSR/LOADREMOTE b/etc/ESSR/LOADREMOTE
index 61b388733..294d5cf06 100644
--- a/etc/ESSR/LOADREMOTE
+++ b/etc/ESSR/LOADREMOTE
@@ -1,23 +1,23 @@
 ## -*- mode: R -*-
 ## loading code which is first sent to R on remote sessions
 local({
-    curver <- '%s'
-    ## MM: ok for Windows?
-    ## VS: Should be fine (who is using win remote anyways?)
-    .c.dir <- '~/.config/ESSR'
-    verfile <- file.path(.c.dir, 'VERSION')
-    envfile <- file.path(.c.dir, 'ESSR.rda')
-    ver <- if(file.exists(verfile)) scan(verfile, what = "string") else "0.0"
+    ver <- '1.3'
+    root <- '~/.config/ESSR'
+    if(!file.exists(root))
+        dir.create(root, recursive = TRUE)
+    ## cannot use sprintf here
+    essr_file <- file.path(root, paste('ESSRv', ver, '.rds', sep = ''))
     tryCatch({
-        if(ver < curver) {
-            url <- paste('https://vitalie.spinu.info/ESSR/ESSR_', curver, '.rda', sep = '')
-            if(!file.exists(.c.dir))
-                dir.create(.c.dir, recursive = TRUE)
-            utils::download.file(url, envfile)
-            cat(curver, file = verfile)
+        if(!file.exists(essr_file)) {
+            url <- paste('https://github.com/emacs-ess/ESS/raw/ESSRv', ver, '/etc/ESSR.rds', sep = '')
+            utils::download.file(url, essr_file)
         }
-        load(envfile)
+        ESSR <- readRDS(essr_file)
         attach(ESSR)
         print(TRUE)
-    } , error = function(e) print(FALSE))
+    },
+    error = function(e) {
+      print(e)
+      print(FALSE)
+    })
 })
diff --git a/etc/ESSR/VERSION b/etc/ESSR/VERSION
index cb174d58a..a58941b07 100644
--- a/etc/ESSR/VERSION
+++ b/etc/ESSR/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-1.2.1
\ No newline at end of file
+1.3
\ No newline at end of file