Comments regarding r-cran-spdep_0.5-92-1_amd64.changes

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Roger,

I hope you remember the discussion we had two years ago when I tried to
package spdep for Debian as a dependency to test some R epipdemiology
tools.  I somehow gave up since the packages can be run with out spdep.
However, we have now some bioinformatics tools that have a strong
dependency and so we need to dive into this again.

As you can read below the Debian ftpmaster has reviewed the source code
of spdep and found a weak part in the licensing.  If you ask me this
issue is also relevant for distributing spdep code on CRAN but nobody
has stumbled upon this before.  It would be great if you could clarify
the license of these pieces of code or replace it by some alternative
free code.

Kind regards and thanks for your support

      Andreas.

On Sun, Apr 03, 2016 at 04:49:37PM +0000, Thorsten Alteholz wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
> 
> the issues about src/soigraph.c are not really solved.
> 
> According to the file:
> * 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), specifically from arm/arm.c. Copyright for those subroutines
> *  remains his.
> 
> As you can see, for example on Amazon, this book contains a paragraph:
> 
> This book is in copyright. (...) no reproduction of any part may take 
> place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
> 
> From my point of view this does not look like that "This code may be 
> freely redistributed" ...
> 
>   Thorsten
> 
> 
> 
> 
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