[Rd] Re: RFC on first public draft of 'Debian R Policy'

[Bernhard R. Link]

* Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> [031231 04:10]:
> 			     Debian R Policy
> 			  Draft Proposal - v 0.1.3
[...]
> 
> 			   December 30, 2003
[...]
> The R system has its own concept of packages that provide base functionality
> and extensions for the language.  The Debian r-base-core package installs 15
> required R packages in the directory /usr/lib/R/library.  The Debian package
> r-recommended installs another 13 R packages in the same directory.

This is just some small suggestion: Having explicit numbers without any
qualifier will demand you to adopt these with any new revision. Some
phrase like "currently (as in Dec 2003)" might cure some future
overlooks.

> 3.2.2 debian/copyright
> 
> The copyright file typically consists of three sections. First,
> information about the package, its author and purpose are briefly
> stated. Second, the canonical source of the package is identified. Third,
> the copyright information is stated. As Debian adheres to the Debian Free
> Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines),
> only software that matches this criteria can be added to the Debian
> archive.  As CRAN follows a similar spirit, most R packages should be
> suitable but packagers of prospective R packages should be careful to
> ensure that the R package is DFSG-free.

Here could be added the tip to ask debian-legal, if the licence has not
be decided upon. It sometimes confused people that DFSG and OSD are
so similar but are sometimes differently interpreted.

> ...........................................................................
> This is the Debian GNU/Linux r-cran-car package of car, the Companion to
> Applied Regression package for GNU R. Car was written by John Fox.
> 
> This package was created by Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org>.
> The sources were downloaded from 
> 	http://cran.us.r-project.org/src/contrib/
[...]
> Car is copyright John Fox and released under the GNU General Public License
> (GPL).
> 
> On a Debian GNU/Linux system, the GPL license is included in the file
> /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.
> 
[...]
>    Author: John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca>. I am grateful to Douglas Bates,
>      David Firth, Michael Friendly, Georges Monette, Brian Ripley, and
>      Sanford Weisberg for various suggestions.
>    Maintainer: John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca>
[...]
>    License: GPL version 2 or newer
>    URL: http://www.r-project.org, http:/www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/
> ...........................................................................

I think here a bit better example could be nicer. While the information
can be found in the later trunk, some note would be nice, that the
copyright file should list:

- anyone owning copyright (not only upstream author, though that may
  be the same in most cases) best together with some way to contact
  him (i.e. the e-mail address given).
- The exact license given. The "version 2" is important information
  and the "or newer" could becaume important in the future.

Some people also demand some form with "Copyright", and C in an circle
and a year of creation as information needed by some historic
international treaty, but I think that is even historic in the US.

Hochachtungsvoll,
  Bernhard R. Link

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