NKnkurz·Jan 21, 2015
This is probably a hard post to evaluate from the outside: is he right, or just overly sensitive? Earlier I would have been skeptical, but I've recently started on a project in R, and based on my experience so far I think he's mostly right: there are some real problems with R development. But I'd put less emphasis on individual "bad apples", and more on a culture that is dealing poorly with the approach of "development in the open". I think this recent exchange on the list illustrates nicely: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/PATCH-Makefile-add-support-for...
The R source repository is in Subversion. A new contributor offers a very small patch to allow source downloaded from a git mirror to compile correctly. The response (not from Ripley) is "I think we are unlikely to accept this change. Nobody in R Core uses git this way, so it would
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never be tested, and would likely soon fail." A reasonable position in some cases, but seems odd for a two line patch a Makefile that opens development to new contributors. Even stranger, it turns out that the patch is mostly working around a commit from several years ago (by Ripley) to explicitly prevent compilation from git: https://github.com/wch/r-source/commit/4f13e5325dfbcb9fc8f55...
Even stranger, this commit is commented "trap HK Leung misuse", where Han-Tak Leung is an earlier mailing list participant who had problems compiling as a result of using the "git-svn" compatibility layer. The thread discussing that earlier issue concluded (not Ripley): "The generic point is that you are given access to a working tool that is internal to the core R developers. We are not putting restrictions on what you do with that access, but if you want to play the game by other rules than we do, you need to take the consequences. If things don't work and you start complaining about them being "broken", steps may be taken to make it clearer who broke them."
Considering the source repository and ability to submit patches as "access to a working tool that is internal to the core R developers" strikes me as a short-sighted approach. Spiking your source to refuse to compile if not checked out directly from svn seems like a bad strategy. Explaining the purpose as to "trap misuse" by an individual might be pathological. It makes me pessimistic about R's future.