I have been packaging both R and the R contributed libraries for the Debian GNU/Linux operating system. Right now if anyone installs Debian Linux on an Intel machine or a DEC Alpha they will have the option of installing R as a regular part of the operating system. I think this is a good way of getting wider distribution of high quality statistical software. The Linux community is growing rapidly and is one of the highlights of the free software effort. I have heard from several people who started using R because it was included with Debian Linux. Since vendors are encouraged to make CD-ROM's from the entire distribution, the Debian organization is very careful about copyrights for the code. The base R language is covered by the GNU Public License (GPL) but some of the contributed libraries have other copyright statements. As a result I have divided the libraries into r-cran, the contributed libraries that are covered by a copyright that follows the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), r-cran-non-free, the contributed libraries that do not seem to be DFSG-compliant, and r-mlbench. That mlbench library is split into its own package because it is large and not everyone wants to install it. I have just been informed (see below) that the copyright statement I made about the r-cran-non-free package is insufficient. I have to clarify the copyright status of every library included in this package. I'm a little pressed for time right now and may not be able to do this by myself. My only option then would be to withdraw the package. I think that would be a shame because the package contains very useful libraries like the survival analysis library. I believe Kurt and Fritz are going to start to ask for contributed libraries to include a statement of copyright as part of the submission to CRAN. That would help me a lot. Could anyone converting a library or writing a new library please take care to include a copyright statement? If you are converting a library and the copyright status of the original code seems murky, please try to contact the original authors and get the copyright status cleared up. If we could quickly establish a format for the copyright file for a submitted library and contributors could update their libraries, that again would help a lot. I don't like making work for others but I think there are great benefits from this. I believe that it is helpful to have good cooperation between the Debian organization and the R developers. I personally prefer the GPL for code but the "Artistic" license under which perl is distributed or the BSD-style license are also acceptable for the regular Debian distribution. Feel free to contact me if I can provide further information. -- Douglas Bates bates@stat.wisc.edu Statistics Department 608/262-2598 University of Wisconsin - Madison http://www.stat.wisc.edu/~bates/ ------- Start of forwarded message ------- Subject: Bug#17407: r-cran-non-free: incomplete copyright file Reply-To: Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>, 17407@bugs.debian.org Resent-CC: Douglas Bates <bates@cs.wisc.edu> Resent-Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 07:33:01 GMT Resent-Message-ID: <handler.17407.B.8855406599032@bugs.debian.org> Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 18:23:40 +0100 (CET) From: Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de> To: Debian Bugs <submit@bugs.debian.org> Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980122182112.6087A-100000@monet> Package: r-cran-non-free Version: 0.61-2 The /usr/doc/r-cran-non-free/copright file reads: --cut-here-- Individual modules, installed under /usr/lib/R/library/, contain their own copyright statements. These modules considered not to be Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) compliant. --cut-here-- According to current policy, the copyright file should contain the complete license texts. (This is important, since we are planning to set up a license/ directory on ftp.debian.org which contains the copyright files from all non-free packages.) Thanks, Chris -- Christian Schwarz Do you know schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com, Debian GNU/Linux? schwarz@debian.org, schwarz@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de Visit PGP-fp: 8F 61 EB 6D CF 23 CA D7 34 05 14 5C C8 DC 22 BA http://www.debian.org http://fatman.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de/~schwarz/ ------- End of forwarded message ------- -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._