Why no R in Fedora (was Statistical Package (like Minitab) for Linux)

[Marc Schwartz]

On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 19:01, Globe Trotter wrote:
> Why can this not be included simply under the "Mathematical and
> Engineering
> Packages" such as gnuplot, blas and the such like? I agree that
> statistics is
> not math, but even I would be open to this....
> 
> Best wishes!

Good questions.

Keep in mind that the following is based upon my own high-level
knowledge of some of the pertinent issues. I stand to be corrected on
any factual inaccuracies.

Presumably this would be at least partly the case because there is no
"official Fedora" maintainer for R. This person would be responsible for
ensuring that the R base source code and updates are available to the
distro in the same fashion as other official Fedora maintainers do for
other packages (ie. GNOME, Mozilla, OO.org, etc.). In other words,
somebody is accountable to the FC community for R. That is not the case
presently.

This would also presumably require that the FC Bugzilla be setup to
track R bugs, which would then replicate the existing R bug tracking
facilities. Thus, the FC R maintainer, would be responsible for
communicating R bugs reported to FC's Bugzilla back to the R Foundation
for synchronization and resolution.

Bottom line, there is some overhead associated with this process and of
course, someone would need to step up and be willing to be the R
maintainer for FC and assume the responsibilities.

That's my comments on this issue. If anyone from FC is following this
thread, any insights/corrections would be appreciated.

Best regards,

Marc Schwartz