[R-sig-Fedora] License quandry in the Fedora sub-space of all R packages

R P Herrold herrold at owlriver.com
Wed Jun 10 21:21:50 CEST 2009


There was mention of this [r-sig-fedora at r-project.org] mailing 
list on one of the other R lists overnight.  I thought the 
list needed a bit of posting, as I could not recall seeing 
content recently on it.  I cross post to the Red Hat hosted 
list as well, it raises issues relevant there as well

I have been packaging in support of many of the financial 
packages at CRAN and in R-Forge [ http://r-forge.r-project.org/ ],
and end up with a big clutch, to 'satisfy' all needed 
intermediate BuildRequirements and installation dependencies
 	http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Finance.html
 	http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Econometrics.html

[herrold at centos-5 ~]$ for i in zoo xts TTR quantmod opentick \
 	IBrokers ; do rpm -q R-$i \
 	--qf '%{name}-%{version}-%{release} \t %{license} \n' ; done
R-zoo-1.6-1orc   	 GPL-2
R-xts-0.6.5-1orc         GPL-3
R-TTR-0.20-1orc          GPL-3
R-quantmod-0.3.9-1orc    GPL-3
R-opentick-0.1.2-1orc    GPL-3
R-IBrokers-0.2.1-1orc    GPL-3
[herrold at centos-5 ~]$

These are all fine, with GPL licenses, but some of them have 
dependencies (or sub-dependencies) on packages, which in turn 
have licenses that are a problem in the Fedora view of the 
world.  I extract those in the troublesome subset up top in 
this email, and note the complete list of my packaging 
delendency tree after my signature

Let me take a moment, by the way, and commend the fine work 
of Pierre-YvesChibon [pingou -at- fedoraproject -dot- org] and 
the R2spec package which he has devised and worked on.  It 
made much of my effort possible.  Thanks !!

I also have adopted the 'tarball release flattening' approach 
recommended on the Fedora R mailing list earlier this month, 
and will probably make a run through the RawHide packagings 
shortly, filing bugs patches for adopting such throughout:
   https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-r-devel-list/2009-June/msg00003.html

In a quick review of the current RawHide packagings, they have 
'short-circuited' around the 'check' phase in some cases, and 
I will file, or not a lincense deiven inability to clean that 
up as well

Finally I have come up with a 'bootstrap' method to solve the 
'check' phase BuildRequires issue cleanly and traceably, and 
can outline it if anyone else needs a solution


To the license questionable packages, then:

R-acepack		'ace is on Statlib'
R-mapproj		non-commercial purposes only
R-gpclib		further review needed
R-mlbench		further review needed
R-tcltk2		further review needed
 		... these three have a field: file LICENSE
 		which I need to read in each case
R-akima			Fortran code: ACM, free for non-commercial use,
 				R functions GPL
 		... which confuses me mightily as a
 		'derivative work' seems to me to properly be under the
 		same license as the work it is derived from (assuming
 		such a port is the method of creation .. need to check still)
R-tripack		R functions: GPL, Fortran code: ACM, free for
 				noncommercial use
 		... ugghhh -- a combination of issues
 			[noncommercial and possible derivative]
R-adapt			Unclear (Fortran) -- code in Statlib's ./S/adapt
 		... ugghhh -- a combination of issues
 			[unclear, and possible derivative]

The obvious solution is to simply remove the questionably 
licensed content, but they are dragged in and appear as either 
requirements, or 'Sugggests'.

In R parlance, if one wants a clean 'check' phase, one has to 
have the suggests present, it seems, and I can see the reasons 
for that.  My initial thought would be to satisfy the 
dependency with a simply 'dummy' package, but there are 
functional expectations in the 'check' scripts, and this is 
not doable.

Thoughts?  How, other than bypassing the 'check' phase, do 
others address this?

-- Russ herrold

[herrold at centos-5 R2spec]$ rpm -qa R-\* --qf '%{license} \t  %{name} \n' | sort
Apache License 2.0       R-RColorBrewer
Artistic 2.0     R-DynDoc
Artistic-2.0     R-graph
Artistic-2.0     R-RBGL
Artistic-2.0     R-TeachingDemos
avas is public domain, ace is on Statlib         R-acepack
BSD      R-Rcompression
BSD      R-XML
Distribution and use for non-commercial purposes only.   R-mapproj
file LICENSE     R-gpclib
file LICENSE     R-mlbench
file LICENSE     R-tcltk2
Fortran code: ACM, free for non-commercial use, R functions GPL          R-akima
GNU GPL Version 2        R-rpanel
GPL-2 | file LICENSE     R-tframe
GPL-2 | file LICENSE     R-tframePlus
GPL-2 | GPL-3    R-RODBC
GPL 2 or later   R-Defaults
GPL-2    R-AER
GPL (>= 2)       R-car
GPL-2    R-chron
GPL (>= 2)       R-coda
GPL (>= 2)       R-deldir
GPL (>= 2)       R-Design
GPL-2    R-digest
GPL-2    R-dynlm
GPL-2    R-e1071
GPL (>= 2)       R-fAssets
GPL (>= 2)       R-fBasics
GPL (>= 2)       R-fCalendar
GPL (>= 2)       R-fCopulae
GPL (>= 2)       R-fEcofin
GPL (>= 2)       R-fExtremes
GPL (>= 2)       R-fGarch
GPL-2    R-Formula
GPL (>= 2)       R-fPortfolio
GPL (>= 2)       R-fSeries
GPL (>= 2)       R-fTrading
GPL (>= 2)       R-fUtilities
GPL-2    R-gam
GPL-2    R-gdata
GPL (>= 2)       R-geoR
GPL-2    R-gplots
GPL (>= 2)       R-Hmisc
GPL (>= 2)       R-igraph
GPL (>= 2)       R-kinship
GPL (>= 2)       R-leaps
GPL-2    R-lmtest
GPL-2    R-maps
GPL (>= 2)       R-maptools
GPL (>= 2)       R-maxLik
GPL (>=2)        R-mlogit
GPL-2    R-mvtnorm
GPL-2    R-oz
GPL (>= 2)       R-PBSmapping
GPL (>= 2)       R-plm
GPL-2    R-pscl
GPL-2    R-quadprog
GPL (>= 2)       R-quantreg
GPL-2    R-Rglpk
GPL-2    R-RMySQL
GPL (>= 2)       R-robustbase
GPL-2    R-Rsymphony
GPL-2    R-RUnit
GPL (>= 2)       R-sampleSelection
GPL-2    R-sandwich
GPL-2    R-scatterplot3d
GPL (>= 2)       R-sem
GPL-2    R-sn
GPL (>= 2)       R-sp
GPL (>= 2)       R-SparseM
GPL (>= 2)       R-spatstat
GPL-2    R-strucchange
GPL (>= 2)       R-svDialogs
GPL (>= 2)       R-svGUI
GPL (>= 2)       R-svIDE
GPL (>= 2)       R-svMisc
GPL (>= 2)       R-svSocket
GPL (>= 2)       R-svTools
GPL (>= 2)       R-svUnit
GPL (>= 2)       R-svWidgets
GPL (>= 2)       R-systemfit
GPL (>= 2)       R-timeDate
GPL (>= 2)       R-timeSeries
GPL-2    R-tseries
GPL (>=2)        R-urca
GPL-2    R-VGAM
GPL (>= 2)       R-xtable
GPL-2    R-zoo
GPL (>= 3)       R-corpcor
GPL-3    R-IBrokers
GPL-3    R-opentick
GPL-3    R-operators
GPL-3    R-pack
GPL-3    R-quantmod
GPL-3    R-TTR
GPL-3    R-xts
GPL      R-biglm
GPL      R-ineq
GPL      R-misc3d
GPL      R-np
GPL      R-rgl
GPL      R-tkrplot
GPLv2+   R-core
GPLv2+   R-devel
GPL version 2 or later.          R-backtest
GPL version 2 or later   R-bitops
GPL Version 2 or later.          R-RandomFields
GPL version 2 or later   R-randomForest
GPL version 2 or later   R-RArcInfo
GPL (version 2 or later)         R-ROCR
GPL version 2 or newer   R-covRobust
GPL version 2 or newer   R-Ecdat
GPL version 2 or newer   R-logspline
GPL version 2 or newer (see README).     R-splancs
GPL Version 2    R-its
GPL version 2    R-MCMCpack
GPL Version 2    R-mnormt
GPL (version 2)          R-sm
GPL version 3    R-caTools
GPL Version 3    R-fts
LGPL-2.1         R-gtools
LGPL (>= 2.1)    R-Rcpp
LGPL (>= 2.1)    R-R.methodsS3
LGPL (>= 2.1)    R-R.oo
LGPL (>= 2.1)    R-R.utils
LGPLv2+          R-DBI
LGPLv2+          R-RSQLite
Original ??, extensions GPL version 2 or newer   R-sgeostat
Public domain    R-evalstrat
R functions: GPL, Fortran code: ACM, free for noncommercial use          R-tripack
Unclear (Fortran) -- code in Statlib's ./S/adapt         R-adapt
Unlimited        R-DAAG
Unlimited        R-fame
Unlimited        R-tis
[herrold at centos-5 R2spec]$



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