[R-sig-Geo] McSpatial discontinued

[Roger Bivand]

On Fri, 29 Mar 2013, Andreas Forø Tollefsen wrote:

> Dear r-sig-geo people,
>
> I have previously used the McSpatial package. However, according to it's 
> website it is removed from the CRAN library. Hence, it is not available 
> for R 2.15.3.
>
> Does anyone know if the project is closed down?

I do not know specifically, but CRAN policies with regard to dependency on 
non-free software (McSpatial depends on akima, which has a non-free 
license) have been been made clearer. Packages depending on akima and 
others with similar status must modify their own licenses, or split out 
the functions involved, obliging the user to opt into the non-free license 
of the upstream dependency.

You may download the source package from the CRAN package archives:

http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/McSpatial/

and install it from source yourself.

In this case, its author, Daniel McMillen and I are hoping that a 
replacement for akima will be an adopted Google Summer of Coding project 
if R gets enough project slots - see:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/gsoc-r/8ZUQCVlyodk

If/when that happens, we will have a viable alternative under a free 
license.

CRAN has to be concerned about license management, because (if one was a 
lawyer, I am not!) funded research might be seen as a commercial activity, 
as might courses for which participants pay. So many universities and 
research labs are asking for better control of the licenses of R 
contributed packages, and CRAN is trying to help to sort things out.

Hope this clarifies,

Roger

>
> Andreas
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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-- 
Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, NHH Norwegian School of Economics,
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