[R-pkg-devel] tibbles are not data frames

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 27/09/2017 6:21 AM, Jens Oehlschlägel wrote:
> 
> On 27.09.2017 01:00, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> I think R Core would not be interested in a vote, because you'd be
>> voting to give them work to do, and that's really rude.
> 
> Voting about other people's work is indeed a problem. This is were I
> hope money from the R Consortium could help, assuming they are serious
> about contributing to the community (and serious about protecting their
> investments into interfacing R).
> 
>> What would have a better chance of success would be for someone to
>> write a short article describing the proposal in detail, and listing
>> all changes to CRAN and Bioconductor packages that would be necessary
>> to implement it.  That's a lot of work!  Do you have time to do it?
> 
> Specifying all the consequences of such a change in detail is a similar
> amount of work than actually doing it. 

No, it's only half the work.  Most of the changes have to be made by the 
package maintainers.  From my short experience working on CRAN last 
winter, it's at least as much work to contact and explain the changes to 
the maintainers as it is to work out what the changes are

Are you suggesting that I do the
> work alone? 

No, but someone has to organize it, and I was suggesting you should do that.

> And predicting from past experience the chances that R-core
> would accept my suggestion: guess what I would do?
You're right that most suggestions are rejected by R Core, so I'd 
recommend writing the detailed spec first.  It shouldn't just describe 
the code changes, it should describe how they will be implemented.

> 
> Such improvements of the language should be suggested by everyone who
> sees need, filtered through a voting process open to every user (flagged
> for package authors to get an early picture of their votes), the
> promising changes planned in detail by R Core (given a budget for
> implementation from the R-consortium), confirmed by a voting process of
> all package authors and then put on a sufficient long-term roadmap. So
> if R Consortium and R Core commit to such a process and you ask me if I
> am willing to compile a first list of suggestions for change: I don't
> have time but I would collect and consolidate input from this list. Any
> volunteers for organizing a voting system assuming the above commitments?
I don't think voting should be a part of it, as I said in my previous 
message.  You need to convince every R Core member not to veto the 
change, and at least one member of R Core to commit the changes.  They 
aren't going to be convinced by a vote.

For funding, the R Consortium does have a process of applying for money 
(see https://www.r-consortium.org/projects).

Duncan Murdoch