Copyrights for R contributed libraries

[Douglas Bates]

I have been packaging both R and the R contributed libraries for the
Debian GNU/Linux operating system.  Right now if anyone installs
Debian Linux on an Intel machine or a DEC Alpha they will have the
option of installing R as a regular part of the operating system.  I
think this is a good way of getting wider distribution of high quality
statistical software.  The Linux community is growing rapidly and is
one of the highlights of the free software effort.  I have heard from
several people who started using R because it was included with 
Debian Linux.
 
Since vendors are encouraged to make CD-ROM's from the entire
distribution, the Debian organization is very careful about copyrights 
for the code.  The base R language is covered by the GNU Public
License (GPL) but some of the contributed libraries have other
copyright statements.  As a result I have divided the libraries into
r-cran, the contributed libraries that are covered by a copyright that 
follows the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), r-cran-non-free,
the contributed libraries that do not seem to be DFSG-compliant, and
r-mlbench.  That mlbench library is split into its own package because 
it is large and not everyone wants to install it.

I have just been informed (see below) that the copyright statement I
made about the r-cran-non-free package is insufficient.  I have to
clarify the copyright status of every library included in this
package.  I'm a little pressed for time right now and may not be able
to do this by myself.  My only option then would be to withdraw the
package.  I think that would be a shame because the package contains
very useful libraries like the survival analysis library.

I believe Kurt and Fritz are going to start to ask for contributed
libraries to include a statement of copyright as part of the
submission to CRAN.  That would help me a lot.  Could anyone
converting a library or writing a new library please take care to
include a copyright statement?  If you are converting a library and
the copyright status of the original code seems murky, please try to
contact the original authors and get the copyright status cleared up.

If we could quickly establish a format for the copyright file for a
submitted library and contributors could update their libraries, that
again would help a lot.  I don't like making work for others but I
think there are great benefits from this.  I believe that it is
helpful to have good cooperation between the Debian organization and
the R developers.

I personally prefer the GPL for code but the "Artistic" license under
which perl is distributed or the BSD-style license are also acceptable
for the regular Debian distribution.

Feel free to contact me if I can provide further information.
-- 
Douglas Bates                            bates@stat.wisc.edu
Statistics Department                    608/262-2598
University of Wisconsin - Madison        http://www.stat.wisc.edu/~bates/
------- Start of forwarded message -------
Subject: Bug#17407: r-cran-non-free: incomplete copyright file
Reply-To: Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>, 17407@bugs.debian.org
Resent-CC: Douglas Bates <bates@cs.wisc.edu>
Resent-Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 07:33:01 GMT
Resent-Message-ID: <handler.17407.B.8855406599032@bugs.debian.org>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 18:23:40 +0100 (CET)
From: Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>
To: Debian Bugs <submit@bugs.debian.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980122182112.6087A-100000@monet>


Package: r-cran-non-free
Version: 0.61-2

The /usr/doc/r-cran-non-free/copright file reads:

--cut-here--
Individual modules, installed under /usr/lib/R/library/, contain their
own copyright statements.  These modules considered not to be Debian
Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) compliant.
--cut-here--

According to current policy, the copyright file should contain the
complete license texts. (This is important, since we are planning to set
up a license/ directory on ftp.debian.org which contains the copyright
files from all non-free packages.)


Thanks,

Chris

--                 Christian Schwarz
Do you know         schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com,
Debian GNU/Linux?    schwarz@debian.org, schwarz@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de
      
Visit                  PGP-fp: 8F 61 EB 6D CF 23 CA D7  34 05 14 5C C8 DC 22 BA
http://www.debian.org   http://fatman.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de/~schwarz/

------- End of forwarded message -------
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._