[Debian-med-packaging] rgeos Debian package rejected because of GPL incompatible gpclib

[Roger Bivand]

Andreas,

On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Andreas Tille wrote:

> Hi Roger,
>
> I intended to package rgeos for Debian since it would enable the test
> suite of some other package.  Unfortunately rgeos contains
> R/Rgpc_funcs.R which uses gpclib that has a license:
>
>   Free for non-commercial use; commercial use prohibited (see the files
>   `gpc.c' and `gpc.h' for details)
>
> So how could this be GPL-2?
>

Obviously it is, because rgeos neither suggests, links to, imports or 
depends on the R gpclib package, nor does it load or attach that package.

The functions in R/gpc_geos.R convert sp objects to R gpclib classes, 
defined in R/Rgpc_funcs.R. The examples in man/gpc-new-generics.Rd 
expressly show how to use GEOS compiled code instead of gpclib compiled 
code to yield the same results. That is, when rgeos was first published in 
2011, one of its intentions was to show that nobody needed to use the 
R gpclib package with its awkward license, but that the code in 
R/Rgpc_funcs.R provided a drop-in replacement - load rgeos instead of 
gpclib and get the same output but without the gpclib license issue. The 
code copied from gpclib/R/Rgpc.R to rgeos/R is:

## Copyright (C) 2003-2010 Roger D. Peng <rpeng at jhsph.edu>

Our understanding of the R gpclib LICENSE is that it only refers to the 
code written by Alan Murta and "taken" by this former employer - that is 
the files src/gpc.*. This is evidenced by the verbatim text of the package 
LICENSE file: Free for non-commercial use; commercial use prohibited (see 
the files `gpc.c' and `gpc.h' for details). Obviously C and R code written 
by the maintainer or contributed by others is not covered by this 
restriction.

If the ftpmaster doesn't grasp one of the purposes of rgeos having been to 
provide a substitute for gpclib, I think it is that person's problem 
exclusively. I can see that the R gpclib package LICENSE file should have 
been drafted to state that only src/gpc.* are covered by the conditions 
stated therein, and that the remainder should have been given an 
appropriate license. I could enter a pull request to gpclib about that, 
and I could consider dropping the gpclib substitution code from rgeos, 
because we've won that battle. But really suggesting that I don't know 
what I'm doing only shows that the ftpmaster has severely limited ability 
to understand how software is actually developed and used, and is probably 
a bot - "sees": Free for non-commercial use; commercial use prohibited 
(see the files`gpc.c' and `gpc.h' for details), and reacts without any 
insight or analysis.

You could have read the code too. How many more stupid interventions do I 
have to tolerate before I ban any Debian packaging of my work?

Roger

> Kind regards
>
>        Andreas.
>
> On Wed, Feb 01, 2017 at 10:00:10PM +0000, Thorsten Alteholz wrote:
>>
>> Hi Andreas,
>>
>> according to http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/alan/software/ the gpclib needs a special license for commercial use.
>>
>> So how do you know that rgeos/R/Rgpc_funcs.R is under GPL-2?
>>
>>   Thorsten
>>
>>
>>
>> ===
>>
>> Please feel free to respond to this email if you don't understand why
>> your files were rejected, or if you upload new files which address our
>> concerns.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Debian-med-packaging mailing list
>> Debian-med-packaging at lists.alioth.debian.org
>> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-med-packaging
>>
>
>

-- 
Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140
https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en
http://depsy.org/person/444584