R devel - Sep 2009 - License of Port3 library for R

I developed some code that called subroutines from the Port3 Library
(http://www-out.bell-labs.com/project/PORT/).  I?m thinking about making it
available as an R package.  But I?m not sure if their NON-EXCLUSIVE SOURCE
CODE LICENSE AGREEMENT (
http://www-out.bell-labs.com/topic/swdist/licenses/nesource.txt ) permits
this.  I tried contacting the contact person listed on the website.  Not
surprisingly, the recipient doesn't exist at Lucent anymore.  Any advice on
this will be appreciated.


Pin Ng
Associate Professor of Economics
The W. A. Franke College of Business
Northern Arizona University
P.O. Box 15066
Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5066
(Phone) 928-523-8726
(Fax) 928-523-7331
(Email) Pin.Ng at nau.edu
(URL) http://www.cba.nau.edu/pin-ng

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 2:49 AM, Pin Tian Ng<Pin.Ng at nau.edu>
wrote:
> ? ? ?I developed some code that called subroutines from the Port3 Library
> (http://www-out.bell-labs.com/project/PORT/). ?I?m thinking about making it
> available as an R package. ?But I?m not sure if their NON-EXCLUSIVE SOURCE
> CODE LICENSE AGREEMENT (
> http://www-out.bell-labs.com/topic/swdist/licenses/nesource.txt ) permits
> this.
 It looks like a single-user, no-redistribution, no copying license.
You could write a package that calls Port3 subroutines, but you
couldn't distribute Port3 source or binaries with it - users would
have to go get it themselves, and then probably they'd have to compile
it.

 It seems though that some of Port3 is derived from Public Domain
sources - see here:

http://www-out.bell-labs.com/project/PORT/doc/README

 and you could include those files.
>?I tried contacting the contact person listed on the website. ?Not
> surprisingly, the recipient doesn't exist at Lucent anymore. ?Any
advice on
> this will be appreciated.
 I'd recommend you rewrite your code to call subroutines from freely
available and redistributable code libraries - in many cases you can
use internal R subroutines, or there's the GSL:

http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/

Barry