Non-GPL packages for R

+1

Commit to freedom if you want the free services of CRAN, etc ...

On 09/11/2009 12:13 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

On 10 September 2009 at 14:26, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
| The SystemRequirements: field of the DESCRIPTION file normally
| lists external dependencies whether free or non-free.

Moreover, the (aptly named) field 'License:' in DESCRIPTION is now much more
parseable and contains pertinent information. A number of more 'challenging'
packages basically pass the buck on with an entry

            License: file LICENSE

which refers to a file in the sources one needs to read to decide.

This is e.g. at the basis of Charles' and my decision about what we think we
cannot build via cran2deb [1]: non-free, non-distributable, non-commercial or
otherwise nasty licenses.  There are a couple of packages we exclude for this
(or related reasons), and we have been meaning to summarise them with a
simple html summary from the database table we use for cran2deb, but have not
yet gotten around to it.

Just like John and Ravi, I would actually be in favour of somewhat stricter
enforcements.  If someone decides not to take part in the gift economy that
brought him or her R (and many other things, including at least 1880+ CRAN
packages with sane licenses) then we may as well decide not to waste our time
and resources on his project either and simply exclude it.

So consider this as a qualified thumbs-up for John and Ravi's suggestion of a
clearer line in the sand.

Dirk

[1] cran2deb is at http://debian.cran.r-project.org and provides 1800+ Debian
'testing' binaries for amd64 and i386 that are continuously updated as new
packages appear on CRAN. With that 'apt-get install r-cran-foo' becomes a
reality for almost every value of foo out of the set of CRAN packages.


|
| On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Prof. John C 
Nash<nashjc at uottawa.ca>  wrote:
|>  Subject: Non-GPL packages for R
|>
|>  Packages that are not licensed in a way that permits re-distribution on
|>  CRAN are frequently a source of comment and concern on R-help and other
|>  lists. A good example of this problem is the Rdonlp2 package 
that has caused
|>  a lot of annoyance for a number of optimization users in R. 
They are also an
|>  issue for efforts like Dirk Eddelbuettel's cran2deb.
|>
|>  There are, however, a number of circumstances where non-GPL equivalent
|>  packages may be important to users. This can imply that users need to
|>  both install an R package and one or more dependencies that must be
|>  separately obtained and licensed. One such situation is where a new
|>  program is still under development and the license is not clear, as in
|>  the recent work we pursued with respect to Mike Powell's BOBYQA. We
|>  wanted to verify if this were useful before we considered distribution,
|>  and Powell had been offering copies of his code on request. Thus we
|>  could experiment, but not redistribute. Recently Powell's approval to
|>  redistribute has been obtained.
|>
|>  We believe that it is important that non-redistributable codes be
|>  excluded from CRAN, but that they could be available on a repository
|>  such as r-forge. However, we would like to see a clearer indication of
|>  the license status on r-forge. One possibility is an inclusion of a
|>  statement and/or icon indicating such status e.g., green for GPL or
|>  equivalent, amber for uncertain, red for restricted. Another may be a
|>  division of directories, so that GPL-equivalent packages are kept
|>  separate from uncertain or restricted licensed ones.
|>
|>  We welcome comments and suggestions on both the concept and the
|>  technicalities.
|>
|>  John Nash&  Ravi Varadhan

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