On 2013-01-04 12:00, r-devel-requ...@r-project.org wrote:
Message: 16 Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 22:52:44 +0000 From: Ben Bolker
<bbol...@gmail.com> To: <r-de...@stat.math.ethz.ch> Subject: Re: [Rd]
Bounty on Error Checking Message-ID:
<loom.20130103t234406-...@post.gmane.org> Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii" ivo welch <ivo.welch <at> anderson.ucla.edu> writes:
>
>Dear R developers---I just spent half a day debugging an R program,
>which had two bugs---I selected the wrongly named variable, which
>turns out to have been a scalar, which then happily multiplied as if
>it was a matrix; and another wrongly named variable from a data frame,
>that triggered no error when used as a[["name"]] or a$name . there
>should be an option to turn on that throws an error inside R when one
>does this. I cannot imagine that there is much code that wants to
>reference non-existing columns in data frames.
>
>I know you guys are saints for developing without financial support.
>but maybe we non-insider end-users can help by putting up a bounty
>list on R-project for us end-users to contribute to? I would pledge
>$500 to a $10,000 fund that funds a project to comprehensively enhance
>the programming and debugging aspects of R. it would only take 20 of
>us to make this possible.
>
>personally, I think basic nudgeware is the way to go. when a user
>starts R in interactive mode, there should be a note that says,
>
> please donate $20 to the R foundation to support the development.
>press enter to continue or enter your contribution number to avoid
>this message in the future .
>
>you can even accept the same string if need be. it's a nudge only,
>not a requirement.
I did bring this idea up briefly 5 years ago (for whatever that's
worth)Lhttp://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/e2/devel/07/05/3202.html.
I very much doubt R-core will go for this, but there's nothing stopping
some private citizen with time and energy on their hands from setting
up their own private bounty system. As I see it the challenges would
be:
* setting up and administering the web site and the bounty system
(i.e. figuring out rules for deciding when a bounty should be paid)
* convincing the R community that their money is safe with you;
* figuring out an appropriate payment/escrow system (Paypal?)
* dealing with any tax and reporting issues relevant to your locality of
receiving and disbursing money
It's conceivable that some existing R-oriented entity (Mango Solutions,
Revolution, RStudio?) would want/be willing to partner.
This won't take care of getting stuff into core R, but (1)
well-worked out proofs of concept would go a long way to convincing
R-core; (2) a lot can be done outside of core R if (for
example) you moved over to using data.table everywhere instead of
data frames (only translating to data frames where absolutely necessary).
(I would love a scalar data type for R, but I don't think that
can be done without a near-complete rewrite ...)
Ben Bolker
The Pypy project is funding the developments of new features this way
(http://pypy.org/ - right side of the page, there are proposals, how
much they cost to implement, and how much was donated). There must be
others, I am just more aware of that one.
A potential difficulty is that all of R-core is possibly already funded
(tenure positions in the academia, I'd guess) and might be moderately
sensitive to the fact that a given feature should be implemented because
people are paying to see it appear.
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