Re: [R-pkg-devel] CRAN student assistants
hat their role is from the outside. I'd really >>> appreciate knowing a little more about them: >>> >>> * Who are they? >>> >>> * Are they paid employees or volunteers? >>> >>> * What is their scope of work? >>> >>> * How are they trained? >>> >>> * If we believe that they have made a mistake, how do we request >>> review from a senior CRAN member? >>> >>> * They appear to be able to apply additional discretionary criteria >>> that are not included in R CMD check or documented in the CRAN policies. >>> Is this true? If so, what is the scope of these additional checks? >>> >>> Hadley >>> >>> [^1]: The devoid package was rejected because the student assistant >>> did not understand the purpose of the package. >>> >>> [^2]: The gargle package was rejected because the student assistant >>> believed that the use of cat() was incorrect. It was not. >>> >>> -- >>> http://hadley.nz >>> >>> __ >>> R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel >>> >> >> >> -- >> Joris Meys >> Statistical consultant >> >> Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling >> Ghent University >> Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent (Belgium) >> >> <https://maps.google.com/?q=Coupure+links+653,%C2%A0B-9000+Gent,%C2%A0Belgium=gmail=g> >> >> tel: +32 (0)9 264 61 79 >> --- >> Biowiskundedagen 2017-2018 >> http://www.biowiskundedagen.ugent.be/ >> >> --- >> Disclaimer : http://helpdesk.ugent.be/e-maildisclaimer.php >> -- 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
Re: [R-pkg-devel] GPL + other licence
Thanks to all for your helpful replies. It seems reasonable to consider that the whole package is indeed licensed under GPL >= 3, and I can therefore remove the LICENSE file. The Qhull COPYING.txt notice is included in the inst/doc directory, as required by the Qhull licence, so I think all should be OK. If the CRAN maintainers are happy with this proposal, that will resolve a major R-packaging headache, so thanks again. Best wishes, David. On Wed 11 Apr 2018 at 16:58 BST, Martyn Plummer <plumm...@iarc.fr> wrote: > I agree with Brian. This type of license is classified by the Free > Software Foundation as "lax" or "permissive" because it does not > prevent incorporation of the code into proprietary software. > > Here is what Richard Stallman has to say: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ > license-compatibility.en.html > > "[L]ax licenses are usually compatible with any copyleft license. In > the combined program, the parts that came in under lax licenses still > carry them, and the combined program as a whole carries the copyleft > license." > > Hence you can license your package under the GPL. > > Martyn > > On Tue, 2018-04-10 at 08:14 -0500, Brian G. Peterson wrote: >> I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see why the entire package can't be >> released under GPL, while also respecting the QHull license for the >> QHull code and the derived QHull portions. >> >> Many existing R packages released under GPL, and R itself, include BSD >> and MIT licensed code. >> >> The QHull license is a very permissive license, basically BSD or MIT- >> like in its permissions. >> >> BSD and MIT code may be included in GPL'd code, as long as its license >> (inclusion of the copyright notice, etc.) is also included where >> required. >> >> GPL applies to the entire work, in this case the R package. I think >> you should discuss this with the CRAN maintainers and release the >> package under GPL. >> >> Regards, >> >> Brian >> -- 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
[R-pkg-devel] GPL + other licence
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
