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

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Thorsten,

ignoring the fact that Roger is not a really polite person I think the
explanation is convincing.  Do you think I should re-upload as is or
should I add parts of his answer to d/copyright?

Kind regards

         Andreas.

On Fri, Feb 03, 2017 at 10:58:09AM +0100, Roger Bivand wrote:
> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
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> >>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
> 
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