Comments from ftpmaster regarding spdep Debian package

[Roger Bivand]

Hi Andreas,

This isn't a patch to my spdep/inst/README file. I have no knowledge of 
any debian/copyright file, and cannot take responsibility for that (I 
don't think installing from source is a problem for non-OSX/Windows users; 
I do not use Debian systems, and do not know anything about their 
packaging systems other than very bad experiences with people with messed 
up GIS packages). If you want me to patch anything, diff from 
spdep/inst/README on R-forge. In particular:

  Copyright: 2005 Yongwan Chun, Michael Tiefelsdorf and Roger Bivand
  License: GPL-2+

looks very wrong. The list of contributors is in spdep/DESCRIPTION in R 
standard parsable form;

+Files: R/bptest.sarlm.R
+Copyright: 1998 Joseph O'Rourke <orourke at cs.smith.edu>

isn't the correct file - should be src/soigraph.c.

I'd be grateful if you'd run any (unneeded) copyright file by me before 
proceeding. If such a file is needed, it should only point to the correct 
file within the R package (otherwise they will get out of sync).

As you can see, the "decision" of a "master" is of very little use to me, 
I'll humour your attempts if you do things right, but have no need to see 
spdep distributed in this way - Debian users should IMO always install R 
packages from source to avoid unintended incompatibilities.

Best wishes,

Roger

On Wed, 30 Jul 2014, Andreas Tille wrote:

> Hi Roger,
>
> thanks for your very fast response.  I keep our ftpmaster in CC since he
> finally needs to decide.  I attached a proposed diff for the
> debian/copyright file.
>
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 05:12:58PM +0200, Roger Bivand wrote:
>> Hi Andreas,
>>
>> On Wed, 30 Jul 2014, Andreas Tille wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Roger,
>>>
>>> I tried to package spdep for Debian on behalf of the Debian Science team.
>>> The Debian ftpmaster had some issues before he will accept the package.
>>> Could you please clarify the points below.
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot and also thanks for providing spdep as free software
>>>
>>>     Andreas.
>>>
>>> ----- Forwarded message from Thorsten Alteholz <ftpmaster at ftp-master.debian.org> -----
>>>
>>> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 11:51:55 +0000
>>> From: Thorsten Alteholz <ftpmaster at ftp-master.debian.org>
>>> To: Debian Science Team <debian-science-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org>, Andreas Tille <tille at debian.org>
>>> Cc: Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster at ftp-master.debian.org>
>>> Subject: Comments regarding r-cran-spdep_0.5-74-1_amd64.changes
>>>
>>> Hi Andreas,
>>>
>>> according to spdep/inst/README parts of src/soigraph.c are taken from
>>> a publication of Camebridge University Press. Can you please confirm
>>> that the license is really GPLv2+?
>>>
>>
>> The code at:
>>
>> http://cs.smith.edu/~orourke/books/ftp.html
>> http://cs.smith.edu/~orourke/CGCode/SecondEdition/Ccode2.tar.gz
>>
>> includes arm/arm.c with the affected functions. This file has:
>>
>> /*
>> This code is described in "Computational Geometry in C" (Second Edition),
>> Chapter 8.  It is not written to be comprehensible without the
>> explanation in that book.
>>
>> Prints out one arm configuration to reach given target.
>> Assumes number of links >= 3.
>> Input:
>>    nlinks           Number of links
>>    L1 L2 ... Ln     Link lengths
>>    x0 y0            target0
>>    x1 x2            target1
>>    ...
>>
>> Written by Joseph O'Rourke.
>> Last modified: December 1997
>> Questions to orourke at cs.smith.edu.
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>> This code is Copyright 1998 by Joseph O'Rourke.  It may be freely
>> redistributed in its entirety provided that this copyright notice is
>> not removed.
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>> */
>
> I think this is fine so far.
>
>> The file src/soigraph.c has:
>>
>> /* Copyright 2001 by Nicholas Lewin-Koh. ****
>> * NOTE
>> * The subroutines TwoCirclesxx and SubVec are adapted for R and Double
>> * precision coordinates by Nicholas Lewin-Koh, from Computational
>> * Geometry in C, Joseph O'Rourke, Cambridge University Press
>> * (1998). Copyright for those subroutines remains his.
>> ****/
>>
>> (slightly edited on R-forge to cite the arm/arm.c file)
>>
>> which we would argue meets the requirements of the copyright holder.
>> If you disagree, it may be possible to reproduce the functionality
>> using another R package.
>
> I'm not sure about this but id definitely does not sound like GPLv?  For
> me this statement does not include any license statement at all.
> Thorsten, what do you think?
>
>>> spdep/R/bptest.sarlm.R seems to be just GPLv2 and not GPLv2+, doesn't it?
>>
>> From:
>>
>> http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/lmtest/index.html
>>
>> lmtest now is GPL-2 | GPL-3; R source file in spdep updated.
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>
> Yes, it does to discuss things further.  Thanks a lot
>
>     Andreas.
>
>

-- 
Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 91 00
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no