R devel - May 2019 - Porting R example datasets to GNU Octave

Hi, R Developers,

I'm interested in porting the R example datasets package to GNU Octave
and Matlab. Would you have objections to my doing so?

This would involve transforming the example data and metadata into a
format that Octave understands, and porting all of the datasets' Example
code pieces to Octave M-code. (This would require no work on your part;
it'd be my project.)

I think this would be a benefit to the scientific programming community.
In addition to helping Octave users, having code for identical example
data sets in both languages would serve as a Rosetta Stone for not only
users moving from R to Octave, but for users coming from Octave or
Matlab to R.

Since R's datasets package is GPL, I think I'd be within my rights to
just do this. But I wanted to ask first, to make sure I didn't ruffle
any feathers. I would include documentation indicating that R is the
original source (well, intermediate source) for these datasets, and have
links pointing back to R's documentation.

Cheers,
Andrew Janke

On 5 May 2019 at 10:47, Andrew Janke wrote:
| I'm interested in porting the R example datasets package to GNU Octave
| and Matlab. Would you have objections to my doing so?

You don't even have to ask...

[...]

| Since R's datasets package is GPL, I think I'd be within my rights to
| just do this. But I wanted to ask first, to make sure I didn't ruffle
| any feathers. I would include documentation indicating that R is the
| original source (well, intermediate source) for these datasets, and have
| links pointing back to R's documentation.

That is the right way to do that. Respect both copyright (citing and
referencing source) and licensing (by picking a license compatible with GPL 2
or later; many of us just prefer to stick to GPL which Octave uses too).

Dirk, in no way speaking for R Core but just handing out his $0.02

-- 
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org