[R] Orphaned R Packages (maybe this is too inside baseball?)

[Uwe Ligges]

Jason Rupert wrote:
> How do the R "powers that be" handle packages that are orphaned from CRAN?  
 >
> Recently, I was looking for a function either part of the base functionality or an add-on package that mimicked the "poly" functionality from Octave (http://n4.nabble.com/Re-R-function-that-duplicates-Octave-s-poly-function-td901174.html) 
> 
> Based on that post a helpful R user  strongly  encouraged me to look at the "signal" package. 
> cran.es.r-project.org/web/packages/signal/index.html  
> 
> Unfortunately, when clicking through on that link the following is received:
> Package ‘signal’ was removed from the CRAN repository.
> Formerly available versions can be obtained from the archive. 
> 
> 
> It appears that the "signal" package was part of those contributed to 2.8, but was not maintained after that, i.e. is not part of 2.9 or 2.10:
> http://mira.sunsite.utk.edu/CRAN/bin/windows/contrib/2.8/
> 
> I'm still pretty new to the package concept in R and how those are maintained, updated, deprecated, etc., so any insight about how this and other similar packages like this are handled is very helpful. 

If an R package is no longer maintained (e.g. if a maintainer does not 
respond any more when asked to fix / adapt the package for a new version 
of R), the package is "orphaned" and is moved after some time from the 
main CRAN repository to the archives.
Any volunteer is welcome to take over maintainership (given the license 
permits it), fix the open issues and upload a new version to CRAN.

Since signal is a package of interest for me as well, I thought about 
taking over maintainership already, but there may be some open license 
issues and I do not have too much time these days.

Best wishes,
Uwe Ligges



> 
> Thanks again for the great insights offered by all those R wonderful R users and maintainers and contributors out there.  It is truly great to see a community be this productive. 
> 
> P.S.  For the time being, I suppose it is okay to continue to use the signal package that was contributed to the 2.8 Version until it no longer functions properly as the architecture continues to advance (which is great).
> 
> 
> 
> 
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