[R-pkg-devel] [R] a question of etiquette

[R. Mark Sharp]

Adelchi,

Actually, the person recognized wrote the original code for the algorithm and he has had other contributors over time that have made several improvements. The code I have is not verbatim from his package as it has been adapted for our purposes, but he is still the originator of the approach and I am certain he and others would recognize the code as being clearly deriviative. I have retained some of the same function names or near derivatives of those names. My coding style is different but that has not changed the basic logic.

With regard to licensing, we both use MIT, which I strongly prefer. The GPL-2 and GPL-3 licenses are apparently sufficiently ambiguous in the legal community that some companies avoid them.

Mark
R. Mark Sharp, Ph.D.
Data Scientist and Biomedical Statistical Consultant
7526 Meadow Green St.
San Antonio, TX 78251
mobile: 210-218-2868
rmsharp using me.com











> On Jun 2, 2020, at 1:32 AM, Adelchi Azzalini <azzalini using stat.unipd.it> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for this information, Mark.
> 
> Given the phrase "small but important function my package uses", it seems 
> that you included in your package some code, reproducing it verbatim. 
> Do I understand correctly?
> In my case, the code which I am actually using is the R porting of  code
> originally written in another language, namely Matlab.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Adelchi
> 
> 
>> On 1 Jun 2020, at 23:37, R. Mark Sharp <rmsharp using me.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Adelchi,
>> 
>> I have a similar situation where I had made all of the typical academic references within the code and documentation for a small but important function my package uses. I was asked by the CRAN reviewers to add the author of that function to the DESCRIPTION Authors using R section. I added the following:
>> person("Terry", "Therneau", role = c("aut”))
>> 
>> Mark
>> R. Mark Sharp, Ph.D.
>> Data Scientist and Biomedical Statistical Consultant
>> 7526 Meadow Green St.
>> San Antonio, TX 78251
>> mobile: 210-218-2868
>> rmsharp using me.com
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>> 
>>> From: Adelchi Azzalini <azzalini using stat.unipd.it>
>>> Subject: [R] a question of etiquette
>>> Date: June 1, 2020 at 11:34:00 AM CDT
>>> To: r-help using r-project.org
>>> 
>>> The new version of a package which I maintain will include a new function which I have ported to R from Matlab.
>>> The documentation of this R function indicates the authors of the original Matlab code, reference to their paper, URL of the source code.
>>> 
>>> Question: is this adequate, or should I include them as co-authors of the package, or as contributors, or what else?
>>> Is there a general policy about this matter?
>>> 
>>> Adelchi Azzalini
>>> http://azzalini.stat.unipd.it/
>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>> 
>