R P Herrold
2009-Jun-10 19:21 UTC
[R-sig-Fedora] License quandry in the Fedora sub-space of all R packages
There was mention of this [r-sig-fedora at r-project.org] mailing
list on one of the other R lists overnight. I thought the
list needed a bit of posting, as I could not recall seeing
content recently on it. I cross post to the Red Hat hosted
list as well, it raises issues relevant there as well
I have been packaging in support of many of the financial
packages at CRAN and in R-Forge [ http://r-forge.r-project.org/ ],
and end up with a big clutch, to 'satisfy' all needed
intermediate BuildRequirements and installation dependencies
http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Finance.html
http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Econometrics.html
[herrold at centos-5 ~]$ for i in zoo xts TTR quantmod opentick \
IBrokers ; do rpm -q R-$i \
--qf '%{name}-%{version}-%{release} \t %{license} \n' ; done
R-zoo-1.6-1orc GPL-2
R-xts-0.6.5-1orc GPL-3
R-TTR-0.20-1orc GPL-3
R-quantmod-0.3.9-1orc GPL-3
R-opentick-0.1.2-1orc GPL-3
R-IBrokers-0.2.1-1orc GPL-3
[herrold at centos-5 ~]$
These are all fine, with GPL licenses, but some of them have
dependencies (or sub-dependencies) on packages, which in turn
have licenses that are a problem in the Fedora view of the
world. I extract those in the troublesome subset up top in
this email, and note the complete list of my packaging
delendency tree after my signature
Let me take a moment, by the way, and commend the fine work
of Pierre-YvesChibon [pingou -at- fedoraproject -dot- org] and
the R2spec package which he has devised and worked on. It
made much of my effort possible. Thanks !!
I also have adopted the 'tarball release flattening' approach
recommended on the Fedora R mailing list earlier this month,
and will probably make a run through the RawHide packagings
shortly, filing bugs patches for adopting such throughout:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-r-devel-list/2009-June/msg00003.html
In a quick review of the current RawHide packagings, they have
'short-circuited' around the 'check' phase in some cases, and
I will file, or not a lincense deiven inability to clean that
up as well
Finally I have come up with a 'bootstrap' method to solve the
'check' phase BuildRequires issue cleanly and traceably, and
can outline it if anyone else needs a solution
To the license questionable packages, then:
R-acepack 'ace is on Statlib'
R-mapproj non-commercial purposes only
R-gpclib further review needed
R-mlbench further review needed
R-tcltk2 further review needed
... these three have a field: file LICENSE
which I need to read in each case
R-akima Fortran code: ACM, free for non-commercial use,
R functions GPL
... which confuses me mightily as a
'derivative work' seems to me to properly be under the
same license as the work it is derived from (assuming
such a port is the method of creation .. need to check still)
R-tripack R functions: GPL, Fortran code: ACM, free for
noncommercial use
... ugghhh -- a combination of issues
[noncommercial and possible derivative]
R-adapt Unclear (Fortran) -- code in Statlib's ./S/adapt
... ugghhh -- a combination of issues
[unclear, and possible derivative]
The obvious solution is to simply remove the questionably
licensed content, but they are dragged in and appear as either
requirements, or 'Sugggests'.
In R parlance, if one wants a clean 'check' phase, one has to
have the suggests present, it seems, and I can see the reasons
for that. My initial thought would be to satisfy the
dependency with a simply 'dummy' package, but there are
functional expectations in the 'check' scripts, and this is
not doable.
Thoughts? How, other than bypassing the 'check' phase, do
others address this?
-- Russ herrold
[herrold at centos-5 R2spec]$ rpm -qa R-\* --qf '%{license} \t %{name}
\n' | sort
Apache License 2.0 R-RColorBrewer
Artistic 2.0 R-DynDoc
Artistic-2.0 R-graph
Artistic-2.0 R-RBGL
Artistic-2.0 R-TeachingDemos
avas is public domain, ace is on Statlib R-acepack
BSD R-Rcompression
BSD R-XML
Distribution and use for non-commercial purposes only. R-mapproj
file LICENSE R-gpclib
file LICENSE R-mlbench
file LICENSE R-tcltk2
Fortran code: ACM, free for non-commercial use, R functions GPL R-akima
GNU GPL Version 2 R-rpanel
GPL-2 | file LICENSE R-tframe
GPL-2 | file LICENSE R-tframePlus
GPL-2 | GPL-3 R-RODBC
GPL 2 or later R-Defaults
GPL-2 R-AER
GPL (>= 2) R-car
GPL-2 R-chron
GPL (>= 2) R-coda
GPL (>= 2) R-deldir
GPL (>= 2) R-Design
GPL-2 R-digest
GPL-2 R-dynlm
GPL-2 R-e1071
GPL (>= 2) R-fAssets
GPL (>= 2) R-fBasics
GPL (>= 2) R-fCalendar
GPL (>= 2) R-fCopulae
GPL (>= 2) R-fEcofin
GPL (>= 2) R-fExtremes
GPL (>= 2) R-fGarch
GPL-2 R-Formula
GPL (>= 2) R-fPortfolio
GPL (>= 2) R-fSeries
GPL (>= 2) R-fTrading
GPL (>= 2) R-fUtilities
GPL-2 R-gam
GPL-2 R-gdata
GPL (>= 2) R-geoR
GPL-2 R-gplots
GPL (>= 2) R-Hmisc
GPL (>= 2) R-igraph
GPL (>= 2) R-kinship
GPL (>= 2) R-leaps
GPL-2 R-lmtest
GPL-2 R-maps
GPL (>= 2) R-maptools
GPL (>= 2) R-maxLik
GPL (>=2) R-mlogit
GPL-2 R-mvtnorm
GPL-2 R-oz
GPL (>= 2) R-PBSmapping
GPL (>= 2) R-plm
GPL-2 R-pscl
GPL-2 R-quadprog
GPL (>= 2) R-quantreg
GPL-2 R-Rglpk
GPL-2 R-RMySQL
GPL (>= 2) R-robustbase
GPL-2 R-Rsymphony
GPL-2 R-RUnit
GPL (>= 2) R-sampleSelection
GPL-2 R-sandwich
GPL-2 R-scatterplot3d
GPL (>= 2) R-sem
GPL-2 R-sn
GPL (>= 2) R-sp
GPL (>= 2) R-SparseM
GPL (>= 2) R-spatstat
GPL-2 R-strucchange
GPL (>= 2) R-svDialogs
GPL (>= 2) R-svGUI
GPL (>= 2) R-svIDE
GPL (>= 2) R-svMisc
GPL (>= 2) R-svSocket
GPL (>= 2) R-svTools
GPL (>= 2) R-svUnit
GPL (>= 2) R-svWidgets
GPL (>= 2) R-systemfit
GPL (>= 2) R-timeDate
GPL (>= 2) R-timeSeries
GPL-2 R-tseries
GPL (>=2) R-urca
GPL-2 R-VGAM
GPL (>= 2) R-xtable
GPL-2 R-zoo
GPL (>= 3) R-corpcor
GPL-3 R-IBrokers
GPL-3 R-opentick
GPL-3 R-operators
GPL-3 R-pack
GPL-3 R-quantmod
GPL-3 R-TTR
GPL-3 R-xts
GPL R-biglm
GPL R-ineq
GPL R-misc3d
GPL R-np
GPL R-rgl
GPL R-tkrplot
GPLv2+ R-core
GPLv2+ R-devel
GPL version 2 or later. R-backtest
GPL version 2 or later R-bitops
GPL Version 2 or later. R-RandomFields
GPL version 2 or later R-randomForest
GPL version 2 or later R-RArcInfo
GPL (version 2 or later) R-ROCR
GPL version 2 or newer R-covRobust
GPL version 2 or newer R-Ecdat
GPL version 2 or newer R-logspline
GPL version 2 or newer (see README). R-splancs
GPL Version 2 R-its
GPL version 2 R-MCMCpack
GPL Version 2 R-mnormt
GPL (version 2) R-sm
GPL version 3 R-caTools
GPL Version 3 R-fts
LGPL-2.1 R-gtools
LGPL (>= 2.1) R-Rcpp
LGPL (>= 2.1) R-R.methodsS3
LGPL (>= 2.1) R-R.oo
LGPL (>= 2.1) R-R.utils
LGPLv2+ R-DBI
LGPLv2+ R-RSQLite
Original ??, extensions GPL version 2 or newer R-sgeostat
Public domain R-evalstrat
R functions: GPL, Fortran code: ACM, free for noncommercial use
R-tripack
Unclear (Fortran) -- code in Statlib's ./S/adapt R-adapt
Unlimited R-DAAG
Unlimited R-fame
Unlimited R-tis
[herrold at centos-5 R2spec]$
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