[R-sig-Geo] About C API of GEOS for sp packages

[Roger Bivand]

On Tue, 27 Sep 2005, Hisaji ONO wrote:

> Hello.
> 
>  Currently C API of GEOS seems to be available according
> to http://geos.refractions.net/ro/CVS.txt.
> 
>  Current spgpclib cannot be used for commercial use.

This is not correct. The maintainer of gpclib has been asked to modify his 
license terms to the correct one, i.e. that the source code of the 
underlying C library may not be incorporated into a commercial software 
product and/or sold. Note that the much larger PBSmapping package includes 
the full gpc C library, which is GPL there. We now have an spPBS wrapper 
from sp classes to PBSmapping, but have not investigated using that route 
to cut out the mistake in the R package gpclib's maintainer's 
understanding of the licence of the underlying C library. 

The easiest is still to try to convince Roger Peng that he should correct
the license line in DESCRIPTION in the package in line with what
PBSmapping does, i.e.  GPL, which provides all the protection Alan Murta
needs (and which his team agreed to in correspondence with the PBSmapping
maintainers). Maybe if Roger gets email from someone other than me about
this, it might help?

> 
>  I think it will be better to use GEOS(its license is GPL,
> probably) , based on OpenGIS and has more functions than
> gpclib.
> 
>  Has sp packages dev. team any plan to develop new sp
> package employing GEOS instead of gpclib?

We are open to contributions, but are generally sceptical about C++ code 
because of portability issues, and even more sceptical to Java, which 
simply does not integrate well with R in a portable way.

Roger

> 
> 
>  Regards.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> R-sig-Geo mailing list
> R-sig-Geo at stat.math.ethz.ch
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-geo
> 

-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no