[Rd] Rcpp: Clarifying the meaning of GPL?

[Yihui Xie]

I see your name and work are clearly mentioned in the DESCRIPTION file:

Rcpp: Rcpp R/C++ interface package

R/C++ interface classes and examples The Rcpp library maps data types
betweeen R and C++, and includes support for R types real, integer,
character, vector, matrix, Date, datetime (i.e. POSIXct) at
microsecond resolution, data frame, and function. Transer to and from
simple SEXP objects is particular easy. Calling R functions from C++
is also supported. C++ code can be 'inlined' and a helper function
(from the 'inline' package) will create a C++ function and compile,
link and load it which makes C++ integration easy. Several examples
are included.

Version: 	0.7.0
Depends: 	R (>=2.0.0), methods
Published: 	2009-12-20
Author: 	Dirk Eddelbuettel with contributions by Simon Urbanek and
David Reiss; based on code written during 2005 and 2006 by Dominick
Samperi
Maintainer: 	Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org>
License: 	GPL (>=2)
URL: 	http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/rcpp.html

Besides, I followed the URL and also saw Dirk's explanation for
adopting your original work (in the "History" section). And when I
opened the source code files, I can see declarations like this here
and there:

// -*- mode: C++; c-indent-level: 4; c-basic-offset: 4; tab-width: 8 -*-
//
// Rcpp.h: R/C++ interface class library
//
// Copyright (C) 2005 - 2006 Dominick Samperi
// Copyright (C) 2008 - 2009 Dirk Eddelbuettel

So the impression does not seem to be misleading at least to me...
Maybe I missed anything or I did not understand your problem?

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
Phone: 515-294-6609 Web: http://yihui.name
Department of Statistics, Iowa State University
3211 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA



On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Dominick Samperi
<djsamperi at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I wrote the Rcpp library and the RcppTemplate package to make it
> easier for developers to contribute packages to the R community.
> In addition to providing detailed documentation on
> package creation it provides a clean object mapping between
> R anc C++ that helps developers to implement packages that
> benefit from the performance of C++ and the flexibility of R.
>
> The package named 'Rcpp' was forked from my work and
> is being developed independently, in spite of many protests
> from me. A diff of Rcpp_0.6.6 and RcppTemplate_5.3 (written
> several years ago), both available at CRAN, will show that
> Rcpp added a few cut-and-paste changes. (The latest release
> of Rcpp has been split up and reorganized so that it would
> be difficult to find the differences now.)
>
> More importantly, while GPL gives developers the right to
> make changes (without the permission of the original
> contributor) it explicitly states that these changes should
> not leave misleading impressions about the original
> developer.
>
> Unfortunately, GPL does not spell out what it means to
> be misleading. I think using the same name ('Rcpp')
> as a library still being developed by the original author,
> and listing yourself as a copyright holder on source code
> alongside the original author without that person's
> permission counts as misleading, but that is my
> opinion.
>
> I am posting this message seeking the opinion of others
> in the R community. Perhaps by sharing ideas we can
> "self-organize" and find an interpretation of GPL that
> benefits all R users, and all package contributors as well.
>
> A minimal resolution of this issue would be to simply
> rename 'Rcpp' to something like 'RInside', or to something
> else that is not misleading.
>
> Thanks,
> Dominick
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>