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GOVERNANCE.md

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+Note: this document was written by Toby Dylan Hocking (not a part of R
+Core, nor R Foundation), with advice from Heather Turner and Dirk
+Eddelbuettel (members of R Foundation). Toby led the community
+development project for `data.table`, which resulted in a
+[GOVERNANCE.md](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/blob/master/GOVERNANCE.md)
+document that codifies the normal operation of that community.
+Writing a formal governance document was an essential step toward
+building a self-sustaining community of people that maintain the
+software, and accept outside contributions. This is an analogous
+document for base R development, of which Toby is not an expert, so it
+is most likely incomplete/incorrect (corrections/suggestions are
+welcome; please comment on the PR). Hopefully this document can serve
+as inspiration, or a starting point, if R core ever wanted to adopt a
+formal governance document.
+
+Governance for R Core Development
+
+# Purpose and scope
+
+## This document
+
+The purpose of this document is to define how people related to the
+project work together, so that the project can expand to handle a
+larger and more diverse group of contributors.
+
+## The R Core Development
+
+The objective of the R Core Development is to "Advance the R project
+for statistical computing to provide a free and open source software
+environment for data analysis and graphics." -- this is item (a) from
+[R Foundation Statutes](https://www.r-project.org/foundation/Rfoundation-statutes.pdf).
+
+The maintenance of the system is guided by the following principles:
+
+* Consistency with the classic textbooks
+* Stable code base, strong preference to make changes that are backwards-compatible
+* Comprehensive and accessible documentation and run-time signals (errors, warnings)
+* Time & memory efficiency
+
+To prioritize developer time, we define what is in and out of current
+scope of functionality maintained by The R Core Development
+Team. Feature requests that are out of current scope should be closed
+immediately, because they are not the current priority. If someone
+wants to contribute code that is currently out of scope, it is
+suggested to write a package.
+
+The current scope of functionality maintained by The R Core Development includes:
+* basic data reading, manipulation and analysis 
+* parallel programming
+* repository management and package installation
+* statistical functions discussed in the classic books
+* graphics
+
+Functionality that is out of current scope:
+* Manipulating out-of-memory data, e.g. data stored on disk or remote SQL DB, (as opposed e.g. to sqldf / dbplyr)
+* Reading/writing of data from/to binary files like parquet
+
+# Roles 
+
+The R Core Development includes three somewhat overlapping but distinct teams:
+
+* CRAN
+* base R code + essential packages
+* R Foundation
+
+## Contributor
+
+* Definition: a user who has written emails on R-devel, posted issues to bugzilla, submitted a patch, etc. 
+* How this role is recognized: there is no central list of Contributors / no formal recognition for Contributors.
+
+## R Core member
+
+TODO
+
+## R Foundation member
+
+TODO
+
+## CRAN maintainer
+
+TODO
+
+# Decision-making processes
+
+TODO
+
+## Changing this GOVERNANCE.md document
+
+TODO
+
+# Finances and Funding
+
+The R Foundation has donation instructions on the [One-off Donation Form](https://www.r-project.org/foundation/donations.html) page.
+
+Funds acquired by the R Foundation will be disbursed at the discretion of the **R Core Team**, defined as above.  TODO consensus.
+
+# Code of conduct
+
+TODO this section was only included to satisfy NumFOCUS requirements, should we delete?
+
+The full Code of Conduct can be found [here](CONDUCT.md), including details for reporting violations.
+
+# Version numbering
+
+R version typically has the following meanings.
+
+* x.y.z where x=major, y=minor, z=patch.
+* TODO add more details or delete?
+
+# Governance history
+
+May 2025: First version drafted by Toby Dylan Hocking.