R devel - Jan 2010 - adapt package missing because of licensing issue: fix?

I think this is probably known by someone, but I wanted to ask/comment:

  The 'adapt' package has been removed from CRAN because of an
'unclear'
license. That makes sense, but it actually took a bit of digging for me
to discover that, and if I had been a student I might not have figured
it out.  The package is simply missing from the CRAN compiled packages
page; I did find information in the check summaries; but I didn't get a
clear indication until I found

http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/adapt/index.html

 by googling (which also gave me a handy link to the archives).

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-fedora/2009-June/000078.html
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/a/adapt/adapt_1.0-4-3/r-cran-adapt.copyright

  give a little more information.

  library(findFn); sos("multidimensional+integration") found the
cubature package for me, which looks like a pretty good replacement but
which I haven't tried out yet.

  My real question: has anyone actually tried to contact the authors and
find out if they are willing to put the code under a suitably
redistributable license? I can't find anything that suggests that they
*don't* want it redistributed ... ? Would it be helpful if I did this,
or is this the sort of thing the package maintainer should do?

Mike Meyer: mikem at andrew.cmu.edu
Alan Genz: Genz at gauss.math.wsu.edu

  cheers
    Ben Bolker

-- 
Ben Bolker
Associate professor, Biology Dep't, Univ. of Florida
bolker at ufl.edu / people.biology.ufl.edu/bolker
GPG key: people.biology.ufl.edu/bolker/benbolker-publickey.asc

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On 14.01.2010 23:25, Ben Bolker wrote:
>
>    I think this is probably known by someone, but I wanted to ask/comment:
>
>    The 'adapt' package has been removed from CRAN because of an
'unclear'
> license. That makes sense, but it actually took a bit of digging for me
> to discover that, and if I had been a student I might not have figured
> it out.  The package is simply missing from the CRAN compiled packages
> page; I did find information in the check summaries; but I didn't get a
> clear indication until I found
>
> http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/adapt/index.html
>
>   by googling (which also gave me a handy link to the archives).
>
> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-fedora/2009-June/000078.html
>
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/a/adapt/adapt_1.0-4-3/r-cran-adapt.copyright
>
>    give a little more information.
>
>    library(findFn); sos("multidimensional+integration") found the
> cubature package for me, which looks like a pretty good replacement but
> which I haven't tried out yet.
>
>    My real question: has anyone actually tried to contact the authors and
> find out if they are willing to put the code under a suitably
> redistributable license? I can't find anything that suggests that they
> *don't* want it redistributed ... ? Would it be helpful if I did this,
> or is this the sort of thing the package maintainer should do?
Ben,

the package maintainer is the one who decides about the license under 
the given restrictions. I guess you meant the CRAN maintainer?

Anyway, be sure that the package maintainer has been notified about the 
license problem by the CRAN maintainers. The CRAN maintainers do not 
remove a package without asking the corresponding package maintainer 
(most often more than once) to fix open issues.

Best wishes,
Uwe


> Mike Meyer: mikem at andrew.cmu.edu
> Alan Genz: Genz at gauss.math.wsu.edu
>
>    cheers
>      Ben Bolker
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
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