[Rd] Rcpp: Clarifying the meaning of GPL?

[Jeff Ryan]

One critical aspect to this is the fact that RcppTemplate seems to
have been where the Rcpp work moved to _before_ abandoning the Rcpp
project.

http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/RcppTemplate/

So the 'namespace' of Rcpp was left with seemingly no public intention
of picking it up.

One of the strengths of GPL is that a package can live on when the
original author has chosen to go a different route.  Rcpp was
maintained by another person (with backward compatibility I think) to
likely not break his (and other's) code.

I don't think it is in the best interest of the community to break
existing code, just because one would like to have complete control
over the end product.

Plus, everyone benefits from competition.  And we have a good one here.

My 2c ;-)

Jeff





On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Henrik Bengtsson <hb at stat.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> I guess one problem is who is in charge of the name Rcpp on CRAN.  For
> instance, can I "fork" of yet another version of Rcpp (or any other
> CRAN package) and submit it to CRAN?  Can the original author submit a
> completely different Rcpp package breaking all the additions made by
> the new contributors?  I don't think the GPL answers those questions,
> but maybe there is something on the ownership to the (original)
> "title/label/name/identifier" of a GPL artifact.
>
> My $.02
>
> /Henrik
>
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>> The central purpose of the GPL license is precisely to allow and indeed
>> encourage the behavior your are criticizing.  In particular, when you
>> release software under the GPL, you are *explicitly* giving recipients of
>> the software the right to modify it pretty much in any way (trivial or
>> radical) they please and redistribute it by any means they choose (as long
>> as they redistribute source with binary and maintain the legal notices).
>> There is no legal or ethical obligation to consult the original author in
>> any way, or even to acknowledge the original author other than by
>> maintaining his or her copyright notice.  The only legal obligation is to
>> maintain the copyright notice and the GPL license itself and to include a
>> notice that the software has been modified (GPL3 section 5a).
>>
>> This is not an accident.  The promulgators of the GPL, the FSF, believe that
>> these are the conditions under which software is best distributed -- that
>> implementors should be free to combine bits and pieces of software from a
>> variety of GPL-compatible licenses with no fear of violating any of their
>> licenses.
>>
>> Obviously these legal and ethical conditions are quite different from those
>> which prevail in academic publishing, and if you don't like them, you should
>> be releasing your software under a different license -- which will probably
>> have the effect of making your software less useful to the community and
>> therefore less widely known and used.
>>
>>               -s
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Dominick Samperi
>> <djsamperi at earthlink.net>wrote:
>>
>>> In my view what has happened is not much different from a situation where I
>>> place my
>>> name as co-author on a research paper that you have created, without your
>>> permission,
>>> after making a few small edits that you may not agree with. Furthermore, if
>>> you complain
>>> I simply present the results (at conferences) as my own without mentioning
>>> your name.
>>>
>>> Is this just a dispute between implementers?
>>>
>>> Stavros Macrakis wrote:
>>>
>>>  On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 12:27 AM, Dominick Samperi <
>>>> djsamperi at earthlink.net <mailto:djsamperi at earthlink.net>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>    Stavros Macrakis wrote:
>>>>
>>>>        That said, as a matter of courtesy and clarity, I'd think that
>>>>        a fork should use a different name.
>>>>
>>>>    Yes, the point is that this is not a legal or technical matter, it
>>>>    is a matter of professional courtesy.
>>>>
>>>>    I take this as one vote for the name change.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The naming and maintenance history of this package (or these packages:
>>>> Rcpp and RcppTemplate) appears to be complicated, and I have no interest in
>>>> becoming an arbitrator or voter in what is a dispute between you and other
>>>> implementers.
>>>>
>>>>    On US copyright law, this should not be confused with "copyright"
>>>>    notices that appear in GPL
>>>>    source code. Remember that these are really "copyleft" notices,
>>>>    and copyleft is designed to
>>>>    protect the rights of copiers, not original contributors.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The copyright notice is a correct and legally valid copyright notice.  The
>>>> GPL (copyleft) is the copyright *license*.  Like all licenses, it defines
>>>> the relationship between authors and copiers.  The GPL explicitly avoided
>>>> the so-called "obnoxious BSD advertising clause", which has requirements
>>>> about giving credit.
>>>>
>>>>              -s
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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-- 
Jeffrey Ryan
jeffrey.ryan at insightalgo.com

ia: insight algorithmics
www.insightalgo.com