[R-sig-Geo] gpclib and IPR

[Edzer Pebesma]

On 08/05/2010 08:56 PM, Roger Bivand wrote:
 ...

> <rant>
> The gpclib package should be avoided, and will be replaced by rgeos
> shortly. The PBSmapping authors claim to have received permission to
> bundle GPC under GPL, but the license constraints are not made manifest
> in the license of PBSmapping - this mess also needs attention.
> 
> That the University of Manchester has arguably hijacked the intellectual
> property of an employee is appears scandalous, and is in itself good
> enough reason to avoid GPC, despite its being a nice piece of work. As I
> mentioned, the R interface to GEOS should be available shortly, and
> hopefully PBSmapping will switch to that code.
> </rant>

Sorry this is a bit off-topic, but not irrelevant.

I believe that in many universities in western Europe (in any case
Netherlands and Germany), universities simply have this property. The
question is how they deal with it, and what they allow employees. It
varies where the real power about it lies and whether it's managed -- it
seems in the UK and the Netherlands some kind of management layer has
it, whereas in Germany it ultimately seems to be in the hands of the
professors.
-- 
Edzer Pebesma
Institute for Geoinformatics (ifgi), University of Münster
Weseler Straße 253, 48151 Münster, Germany. Phone: +49 251
8333081, Fax: +49 251 8339763  http://ifgi.uni-muenster.de
http://www.52north.org/geostatistics      e.pebesma at wwu.de