Perhaps some of the disagreements in working style are due to shifts in the R community? Ripley has been an active member of the Bell Labs S, and later GNU R, communities for about 20-25 years, over which period the user/contributor composition has shifted considerably, which might produce different shared norms/expectations and different friction points. 20 years ago the community was much more exclusively comprised of computationally oriented PhD statisticians, among other differences.
I think "mean" maintainers in open source are also often a result of burnout, and if he's been working on it for 25 years, perhaps it's time for him to take a break.
Comments
Perhaps some of the disagreements in working style are due to shifts in the R community? Ripley has been an active member of the Bell Labs S, and later GNU R, communities for about 20-25 years, over which period the user/contributor composition has shifted considerably, which might produce different shared norms/expectations and different friction points. 20 years ago the community was much more exclusively comprised of computationally oriented PhD statisticians, among other differences.
I think "mean" maintainers in open source are also often a result of burnout, and if he's been working on it for 25 years, perhaps it's time for him to take a break.