R Governance Model

The purpose of this entry is to show whether the governance model of R project is a cathedral in the direction of Raymond's classic "Bazaar" article and based on meritocracy community. Let's go to analyze the following aspects of governance model: Overview, roles and responsibilities, support, decision making process, and contribution process.

    Overview
   
    The project objectives is to implement the R programming language, which is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. It is a GNU project and is available as Free Software under the terms of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License. The copyright holder is by Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka for the first source code and after the R Core Team was added.
And how users can become involved with the development of the project, the starting point is R Developer Page with documentation about project development. 
       
    Roles and responsibilities
   
    The current R is the result of a collaborative effort with contributions from all over the world. R was initially written by Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka—also known as "R & R" of the Statistics Department of the University of Auckland.
    There is a core group with write access to the R source code, currently consisting of 22 members[3][4].
    Besides, there are many others that contributed by donating code, bug fixes and documentation.
   
    The R Foundation is a not for profit organization that holds and administers the copyright of R software and documentation. The principal organs of the “R Foundation” are: The general assembly, the board, the auditors, and the court of arbitration.
   
    The business transactions of the general assembly include:

1. Election and dismissal of the members of the board.
2. Election and dismissal of the auditors.
3. Acceptance of activity report, statement and estimates of account.
4. Release of the board.
5. Determination of membership fees.
6. Approval or rejection of proposed changes to these statutes.
7. The decision to terminate the “R Foundation”.
8. Discussion of and decisions on other topics of the agenda

The board of the organization consists of at least four persons:

1. Either a president and a vice-president or two presidents of equal rights
2. A secretary general.
3. A treasurer

The main board responsibilities:

1. Preparation of activity report, statement and estimates of account.
2. Preparation of and call for general assemblies.
3. Management of all assets.

There are two auditors who routinely check business and accounting of the organization and report to the general assembly.
   
    There is a Court of Arbitration to resolve the disputes.
   
    Support
   
        There are four general mailing lists devoted to R: R-announce, R-packages, R-help, and R-devel. Additionally, there are several specific Special Interest Group mailing lists. And to satisfy geographic or regional (or subject) needs, some R users have formed "R User Groups".
   
    Decision making process
   
    Court of Arbitration decides with majority vote, the chairman decides in case of a draw due to abstention.
        In particular, membership terminated process could be by the death of a person, by voluntary withdrawal and by an affirmative vote of a two-thirds majority of the ordinary members.
   
    Contribution process
   
The core team is the only that has access to the source code.

The R-devel list is intended for questions and discussion about code development in R, and the starting point to begin contribution.
   
Ordinary members have a vote in the general assembly. New ordinary members shall be admitted only by a majority vote of the existing ordinary members. Another role is supporting member, that could be any person or legal entity.
   
There is a posting guide with general instructions of how to use mail lists.
    
The project uses Bugzilla to manage bugs and subversion for software versioning and revision control system.
   
In conclusion, the governance model is a Cathedral composed by ordinary members, and base on meritocracy to be elected by the ordinary members. 
   
References:
[1] R project
[2] R Developer Page
[3] R Project Contributors
[4] R Foundation Members & Supporters
[5] Statutes of “The R Foundation for Statistical Computing”
[6] R bug