[R-sig-Geo] status of gpclib licence

[Nicholas Lewin-Koh]

Hi, 
Thank you for contacting the license holders. Nice to get this
resolved definitively, though shame that they are not willing to open
the license. The good news is that on Rogers good advice I took a
look at ggl and it seems to be very nice. geos looks nice too, but
ggl is more generic and could be used to do clipping in higher
dimensions, cool. If I can get some minimal examples working with ggl
I will be sure and post.

Nicholas 

> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5 Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:25:44 +0100 (CET) From: Roger
> Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no> To: Adrian.Baddeley at csiro.au
> Cc: r-sig-geo at stat.math.ethz.ch Subject: Re: [R-sig-Geo] status of
>     gpclib licence Message-ID:
>     <alpine.LRH.2.00.1001190947480.24342 at reclus.nhh.no> Content-Type:
>     TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> On Tue, 19 Jan 2010, Adrian.Baddeley at csiro.au wrote:
>
> >
> > Nicholas Lewin-Koh and others have asked about the licence for the R
> > package 'gpclib'. This is based on the C library 'gpclib' by Alan
> > Murtagh which has a non-GPL licence.
> >
> > Recently I contacted the licence holders for the C library, with a
> > formal request that the licence be changed to GPL. After contacting
> > Alan Murtagh they replied that it has been decided, definitively,
> > not to alter the licence.
> >
> > Hence we are currently looking for a FOSS replacement for gpclib.
> > Any volunteers?
>
> Adrian,
>
> The rgeos package on R-Forge is almost ready for release.
>
> https://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/rgeos/
> http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/
>
> The proof-of-concept has been to link it tightly to sp classes at the
> C level. The way GEOS is structured makes tight coupling hard to avoid
> - so similar R <-> C interfaces will be needed for other packages.
> Because it isn't just for clipping, it doesn't fit the hole left by
> gpclib neatly.
>
> Finally, it has an external dependency, the GEOS DLL and headers,
> which can be met for Windows binary packages with Uwe Ligges' help
> (tried but not yet operative on R-Forge, ready to roll when rgeos is
> on CRAN). For Unix/Linux users, either install GEOS from source or
> binaries (works on Debian/Ubuntu - libgeos, libgeos-c1, libgeos-dev),
> for OSX using the Kyngchaos GEOS framework (untried
> http://www.kyngchaos.com/ -> software -> frameworks).
>
> An alternative that ought to be followed up at least as proof-of-
> concept is the Boost GGL library:
>
> http://reviews.slashgeo.org/article.pl?sid=09/11/30/1638211
> http://trac.osgeo.org/ggl
>
> Build for GGL is as other Boost software, through a mystical graph of
> C++ headers - like the R RBGL package, which ships with the Boost
> headers in a gzipped tar archive in src/ to create the Boost framework
> at compile time. It is, however, not C++ written as C, it is modern
> C++. So for me, the GEOS C API was easier to handle (for a chosen
> definition of easier).
>
> >
> > In the meantime, packages that depend on gpclib could use the
> > following strategy that we have adopted for 'spatstat'. The
> > 'spatstat' package previously 'Depend'ed on gpclib. I have
> > reorganised spatstat so that it only 'Suggests' gpclib, and the gpclib-
> > dependent code can be enabled or disabled using a flag,
> > spatstat.options("gpclib") which is initialised to FALSE. If you are
> > an academic or non-profit, set spatstat.options(gpclib=TRUE). If
> > you're commercial, leave it as FALSE and have a nice day...
>
> Even if you are academic, but doing contracted research, I'd be
> concerned with the lack of clarity in:
>
> "Commercial use of GPC (for example: product development / commercial
> research)"
>
> http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/~toby/alan/software/#Licensing
>
> which is very much broader than compiling GPC into software for sale.
> I guess it depends on your half-full/half-empty status ...
>
> Unreleased maptools on the sourceforge r-spatial project follows your
> lead on this (different mechanism - flag hidden in environment, same
> principle), but where rgeos is present, uses that instead everywhere
> gpclib was used before. Partly because of the use of C, it yields the
> same results quicker. I'd be very grateful for anyone able to install
> source packages trying out rgeos, and then installing maptools from a
> cvs checkout from r-spatial. When I have some feedback, I'll release.
>
> Helpers very welcome!
>
> Roger
>
> >
> > Adrian Baddeley
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>
>
>
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