21MAY2024_community_meeting_notes.md

R Validation Hub Community Meeting Notes

📂 Meeting Details

📅 Date of Meeting: May 21, 2024

📝 Topic: Tackling Hurdles: Embracing Open-Source Packages in Projects

🔗 Relevant Links

• LinkedIn Post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7196255522990313472

• Blog Post: https://www.r-consortium.org/blog/2024/05/14/tackling-hurdles-embracing-open-source-packages-in-pharmaceutical-research

• Slide Deck: https://github.com/pharmaR/events/blob/main/community_meetings/2024-05-21/RvalHub_2024May_Community_meeting.pdf

🗒️ Meeting Notes

Slide Deck Content

Questions to consider when thinking about open-source contribution

• What do you think may be an obstacle in engaging with open-source technologies?

• Do you find it difficult to separate your engagement as an individual R user from your engagement as a member of a broader company?

• If you work at a company that is starting to use open-source languages, do you feel a conflict in the way you engage with open-source?

• Unwritten rules/etiquette/responsibilities of users and developers, for example regarding feedback or contributions

Large Group Discussion

• Attendees were distributed pretty equally across users, developers, and administrators in regard to open-source, and most had been accustomed to providing comments/feedback about bugs to developers

• Etiquette that everyone contribute for the greater good (ex: develop, report bugs/issues, etc.)

• School/University versus workplace confidence

  • Risk of projects affecting your use of open-source and opting for approaches like base R instead

• Discussions about companies' encouragement or discouragement (even to a legal degree) for open-source involvement

  • Some encouraging if the open-source contribution benefits the company's work (ex: clinical trial filing and contributing to admiral/pharmaverse)

  • Some restrictive to only submitting issues without any hint of what work is being done internally

  • Legal often involved for making something that is originally internal into open-source

• Representing yourself and/or company with open-source involvement

  • Reflective of your capabilities (ex: admitting to not knowing linear regression models well on personal account circling back to company)

  • General reluctance or hesitancy

• Guidelines to make people more comfortable for involvement in open-source would be helpful

Other

• Be on the lookout for our updated website going live

• Community meetings happen quarterly (every three months) on the third Tuesday of the month