[R-sig-Geo] gpclib and IPR

[Roger Bivand]

On Fri, 6 Aug 2010, Edzer Pebesma wrote:

>
>
> 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.

Yes, it is a power question, really, although IIRC there are issues with 
GPC involving the author Alan Murta moving from the university: "Since 
leaving the University of Manchester I have worked as Senior Graphics 
Programmer at Elixir Studios and am now Senior Tools Programmer and Shader 
Technology Manager at TT Games" (http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/alan/). The 
code was last updated in 1999 (2.31), with a small memory leak fixed in 
2004 (2.32), so it is not under active maintenance by its "owner".

Curiously, when we publish papers, it is generally the author who signs 
copyright over to the journal, not the institution. And as open access 
publication progresses, maybe more clarity will enter the copyright of 
code too?

Once we get rgeos out there, at least I'll not be obliged to advise people 
to avoid GPC any more! Anyone who can help with testing rgeos (from the 
svn source on R-Forge for now) will move the release date closer!

Roger

>

-- 
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