On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 2:45 AM, Kasper Daniel Hansen <kasperdanielhan...@gmail.com> wrote: > There are 3 solutions. (1) You (get permission) to change the library to > GPL. (2) You get permission to change the license of the R code to > whatever license the library is released under. (3) you split the package.
For completeness: (4) you find a license that is compatible with both the license of QHull and the license of the existing R package. > You have investigated (1) and it does not work. I would suggest thinking > about (2) provided the license of the library is decent. This is what we > did with Rgraphviz some years ago; Graphviz itself is licensed under the > Eclipse public license and there was no way I could get a company to change > the license of that code. > > I would do whatever I can to avoid splitting the package. > > Best, > Kasper > > On Fri, Apr 6, 2018 at 8:44 PM, David C Sterratt <david.c.sterr...@ed.ac.uk> > wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> I'd appreciate help with a licence conundrum I have with the geometry >> package (https://davidcsterratt.github.io/geometry/) that I maintain. >> >> The geometry package contains some functions (e.g. convhulln(), >> delaunayn()) that wrap the Qhull library (http://www.qhull.org), which >> has its own, non-GPL, licence. The geometry package includes this source >> code, and wraps it in C files that have GPL licence headers. >> >> The geometry package also has functions that are not derived from Qhull >> code and which are licensed under GPL, including a number of functions >> that are ports of the Matlab distmesh package, and some other useful >> functions to do with triangulation and coordinate systems (e.g. >> tsearch() and cart2bary()). >> >> I inherited this situation when I took over maintaining the package 8 >> years ago, though I have added functions to both Qhull-derived and GPL >> categories. >> >> In October last year I submitted the latest version of the geometry >> package, which adds quite a bit of useful functionality: >> https://github.com/davidcsterratt/geometry/blob/master/pkg/NEWS >> >> I received the following response from the CRAN maintainers: >> >> For the license. It is CRAN policy that a package has to have a single >> license. Can you manage to convince all copyright hoders (e.g. of >> Qhull) to relicense under GPL? >> >> I tried persuading the author of Qhull. He replied: >> >> There's only one license and that's the one included with the code >> (COPYING.txt). Several years ago, I tried to clarify the license with >> the Univ. of Minn. but had no success. So I think the best approach is >> to keep the original license as is. It has not been an issue so far. >> >> At the same time as I wrote to the Qhull maintainer, I wrote to the CRAN >> maintainers: >> >> I have written to the Qhull maintainer, but I doubt he will want to >> change the license, since Qhull is used in proprietary software such >> as MATLAB. Assuming this is the case, we'll have to create a new >> package - I would need help with managing the change for dependent >> packages. >> >> The CRAN maintainers replied: >> >> Please try to find out how this can work. >> >> In principle I could create a package containing only the functions >> derived from Qhull (but still with GPL headers in the wrapper C files, >> see e.g., >> https://github.com/davidcsterratt/geometry/blob/ >> master/pkg/src/Rconvhulln.c >> But wouldn't this package still have to have two licenses, due to the >> GPL headers? >> >> I don't want to start on any package splitting without having a plan >> agreed that I know will be OK for CRAN. It would be quite a bit of work, >> as there are a number of packages that depend on geometry, so I would >> have to check all the revdeps for functions that they call in the >> geometry package. I would have to then perhaps write wrapper functions >> in the geometry package to make sure any functions moved to a new >> package still worked when called from revdeps. >> >> I know the CRAN maintainers are busy, so any help from the list would be >> much appreciated. >> >> Best wishes, >> >> David. >> >> -- >> David C Sterratt, Senior Research Associate >> Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation, School of Informatics >> University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, Scotland, >> UK >> http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/sterratt - tel: +44 131 651 1739 >> >> -- >> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in >> Scotland, with registration number SC005336. >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel >> > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel -- http://hadley.nz ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel