[R] Standards for delivery of GPL software in CRAN packages

Galkowski, Jan jgalkows at akamai.com
Mon Jun 27 20:04:39 CEST 2011


Regarding the subject, I want to thank the many respondents for clarifying the nature of the relationship between R and the GPL, as well as giving help with the structure of R-delivered source.

I want to emphasize I meant nothing at all harsh or accusatory in my email. I did say I had access to source, as function name values, just that my expectation was to see functions called out individually. 

The particular case I sought information about a "maxiset threshold" parameter in the package "waved" for the function WaveD and what it meant, trying to understand the related algorithms.  I'm now convinced that I'll need to understand the original papers, Cavalier and Raimondo (2007) and Donoho and Raimondo (2004), as well as Johnstone, Keykyacharian, Picard, and Raimondo (2004), in order to obtain a satisfactory answer.

I think my reaction was in response to being rather spoiled by some of the really excellent, world class, and mature packages and their documentation elsewhere in the R contributions library, some backed up by whole textbooks. I realize all package authors do their best and the packages are thoroughly tested.  I never had any question the package was correct, merely trying to understand how it worked. When I wasn't satisfied by the documentation in the package, I turned to the source.

Again, I meant no offense to anyone. I thank you all for your responses and efforts, and am grateful.

 - Jan



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