[RsR] New maintainer? Package 'robust' (original S+ "Library 'robust') orphaned on CRAN

[Olivier Renaud]

Dear Martin,

First of all, thank you to you, to Kjell and to all contributors for 
these two great packages. If I can add my two cents, mostly as a teacher 
to non statistically inclined students. It is confusing for the basic 
user to have robustbase and robust, to have lmrob and lmRob, covrob, 
covRob, etc.

Even if the 'Robustness' CRAN task view gives some explanations, for 
somebody who did not study robustness, it is still not clear which one 
to chose. So whatever the decision on these packages, it should be 
clearer (in the task view and in the help files) what a basic user 
should do.

I do not know enough to advise whether to merge them, or to include only 
a few functions or to let robust RIP, but here are two points:

- Concerning lmrob and lmRob I have found differences, especially in the 
initial estimator that may make a difference especially with a lot of 
factors in the x.  Liked to that the aovRob was useful

- I liked the possibility to compare 2 outputs with  fit.models (I 
believe I add to add fmclass.add.class( "lmfm", "lmrob") to make it work 
with lmrob)

Olivier





On 05/03/2020 16:20, Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>> Valentin Todorov
>>>>>>      on Fri, 28 Feb 2020 22:31:21 +0100 writes:
>      > Dear Martin,
>      > I was thinking of this since Kjell
>      > abandoned the package, but I was not sure to what extent would this be
>      > necessary - most of the functionality of 'robust' we already moved to
>      > 'robustbase' and/or 'rrcov', therefore it suggests/imports these packages.
>      > Let us see in the next days what still remains there and is valuable and
>      > decide what to do.
>
>      > Best regards,
>      > Valentin
>
> Thank you, Valentin.
>
> I had similar thoughts a long time ago, I think prompted
> indepedently by  Kjell  and Doug Martin ...
>
> I vaguely remember I found that there have been things in
> 'Robust' which looked valuable and notably good to have for
> comparison reasons,
> *but* that were a lot work to "tear out" of the robust package
> (including the necessary underlying Fortran code, but *not*
>   taking all the Fortran code that would *not* be needed ...).
>
> In the mean time the CRAN team has archived the package
> 'robust', and  I must adapt the 'Robustness' CRAN task view
> considerably (and remove the 'Suggests: robust'  from my
> robustbase package.
>
> I'd be grateful for help and suggestions in still trying
> 'salvage' valuable resources out of 'robust'.
>
> BTW:  Why has  rrcovNA  be archived?
>
> Best,
> Martin
>
>
>      > On Fri, 28 Feb 2020, 11:03 am Martin Maechler, <maechler using stat.math.ethz.ch>
>      > wrote:
>
>      >> Dear R Robustniks,
>      >>
>      >> as I am the maintainer of package 'robustbase' and am submitting
>      >> a new version of it to CRAN,
>      >> it came to my knowledge that package 'robust' (= the original
>      >> S-plus "Library 'robust', then released to CRAN, maintained by
>      >> Kjell Konis for time) has been orphaned on CRAN relatively
>      >> recently.
>      >> As I have 'robust' among the 'Suggests: ' entries of "my"
>      >> package 'robustbase' I now get a  NOTE   about suggesting an
>      >> orphaned package.
>      >> I've been formally a co-author of that package (togeth
>      >>
>      >> I personally would think it to be a loss for the "robustnik
>      >> community" if this package would not remain easily available
>      >> (notably on Windows, also the Mac where most people cannot
>      >> install package from the source but are used to install the
>      >> binary built package from CRAN).
>      >>
>      >> Are some you willing and capable to become the maintainer of
>      >> 'robust' (with the perspective to do this for a couple of years)?
>      >>
>      >> Best,
>      >> Martin
>
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-Robust using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-robust

-- 
Prof. Olivier Renaud          https://www.unige.ch/fapse/mad/renaud/
Methodology & Data Analysis - Psychology Dept - University of Geneva
UniMail, Office 4138  -  40, Bd du Pont d'Arve   -  CH-1211 Geneva 4