Duncan Murdoch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Fri, 21 May 2004 15:41:18 +0200, Tamas Papp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > >You are probably right in saying that they _could_ have done better, > >but I would not use "should" in this context. AFAIK the package is > >free (as in beer) software, which means that you are not paying for > >it. The maintainers probably do not need a Linux version (yet), so it > >was not easy to use it under Linux. Feel free to contribute. > > Yes, indeed!
Well, yes and no. Yes, people should feel free to help out with the maintenance, but no, it is not reasonable to leave cross-platform issues unaddressed. Go look on Statlib and I'm sure you'll find code that built and ran with HP-UX Fortran vintage 1992 or so, and got submitted with exactly that sentiment: "It works for me, it's yours for free, but you have to do the work." Of course, not even the original author would know how to make it work again by now. This kind of "bitrot" is what CRAN and all of its red tape was designed to avoid. Whereas we cannot reasonably require people to test code on platforms that they haven't got, we can and should require them to adhere to reasonable standards and test procedures (which, mind you, other people have invested a serious amount of time in working out). -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) FAX: (+45) 35327907 ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
