On 2013-01-04 12:00, r-devel-request at r-project.org wrote:
Message: 16 Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 22:52:44 +0000 From: Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> To: <r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch> Subject: Re: [Rd] Bounty on Error Checking Message-ID: <loom.20130103T234406-301 at 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.