Comments from ftpmaster regarding spdep Debian package

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Roger,

On Fri, Aug 01, 2014 at 09:33:21AM +0200, Roger Bivand wrote:
> >>What is the r-cran-maptools issue - I'm also the maintainer of that
> >>package? I'm not aware of what might be non-free there; maybe the
> >>data files for examples and testing? Nobody has asked me about that.
> >
> >To explain this I need to come back to the debian/copyright file.  Here
> >is the debian/copyright file
> >
> >  http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-science/packages/R/r-cran-maptools/trunk/debian/copyright?view=diff&r1=45900&r2=46749&diff_format=h
> >
> >The files on the right side under the tag "Files-Excluded" do not have
> >any licensing information.  I have asked years ago (Spring 2009) but did
> >not got any answer.  For me (and the users of surveillance the removal
> >of these files is perfectly OK.  So in principle I see no stromg reason
> >to keep the files if it creates a lot of work for you.
> >
> 
> The purpose of all the packages I maintain is teaching at graduate
> levels, and all the examples (so the data sets) are included in the
> packages to permit users to reproduce text book results. This
> software is not an application, it is intended to permit learning,
> first by doing what text books say, then learning from own data.
> This is my ontology. Consequently, the licensing/copyright of the
> code and its documentation is orthogonal to that of the data sets.
> 
> Note that spdep has far more data than maptools, but this has not
> been questioned. If the data license issues in spdep are not a
> problem, why were they a problem in maptools? Is GPL a relevant
> license for data sets (rhetorical question)? The examples on the
> help pages all need access to data sets - the data sets chosen by me
> are those that are most relevant for relating the methods to text
> books in which they are discussed.
> 
> One (bad/ugly) resolution is to create a separate data set package.
> However, this is a general problem because most CRAN packages face
> the same problem.
> 
> By the way, I maintain maptools, and cannot recall being contacted
> in 2009. Nicholas contributed code in 2000/2001, but now has nothing
> to do with maptools.

I forwarded your answer upon this issue from  Wed, 11 Mar 2009 to the
mailing list so it is searchable:

   https://lists.debian.org/debian-science/2009/03/msg00032.html
 
I think the main problem here is that "free" as per Debian's free
software guidelines includes the freedom to change the *files*.  If you
can not grant this freedom (and I can follow your arguing here that
changing scientific data is not a good idea and is orthogonal to the
freedom to change code) per definition it is non-free.

So my crack on this was to drop the data (and once this might be
accepted deliver an accompanying data package in "non-free") for the
profit of the users who are intending to simply run their
epidemiological tools without any specific interest in running maptools
examples.

I hope this sounds sensible to you

      Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de