Re: Debian enquiry about data files in munsell (fwd)
Hi Charles,
I'm forwarding information from Dr. Wickham about the data file in the
munsell package as requested by you. See your email at the bottom, Let me
know what followup you want, if any. I think contacting the authors of a
1943 paper is unlikely to be successful. We could contact the people who
put this data online (presumably people at RIT) to ask them what they
think. There is a feedback page at http://www.cis.rit.edu/mcsl/contact.
Regards, Faheem
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:29:44 -0700
From: Charlotte Wickham <cwickham@gmail.com>
To: Faheem Mitha <faheem@faheem.info>
Subject: Re: Debian enquiry about data files in munsell
I obtained real.dat from http://www.cis.rit.edu/mcsl/online/munsell.php
which is a digitization of Table 1 in: S. M. NEWHALL, D. NICKERSON, and
D. B. JUDD. Final report of the o.s.a. subcommittee on the spacing of the
munsell colors. J. Opt. Soc. Am., 33(7):385–411, 07 1943.
It shouldn't be copyrighted for two reasons: (1) it's data, (2) it's
produced by employees of the federal govt, but I don't have any proof of
that.
I'm updating my package documentation to improve the description of the
source data.
Charlotte
On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Faheem Mitha <faheem@faheem.info> wrote:
Hi,
I've been (sort of) deputized by the Debian Med team, who are trying to get munsell into Debian as r-cran-munsell. But they have hit a bit of a hitch. The
FTPmasters, who are Debian's gatekeepers, are wondering about the data files in munsell.
You ship the file R/sysdata.rda which can be created from the text file inst/raw/real.dat using inst/raw/getmunsellmap.R.
So, Debian wants to know where this data table inst/raw/real.dat comes from, how it was created, and what the preferred way to modify it is.
There are a couple of issues here. First, I think it is simply a question of what the license for inst/raw/real.dat is. Secondly, Debian policy says that
source files should be shipped in the preferred form for modification.
But if necessary Charles or one of the other Debian Med people can clarify.
Regards, Faheem
On Fri, 9 Aug 2013, Charles Plessy wrote:
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 08:28:35 +0900
From: Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>
To: Faheem Mitha <faheem@faheem.info>
Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org, debian-med@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: best policies for third party Debian packaging and get-orig-source target
Le Fri, Aug 09, 2013 at 03:00:25AM +0530, Faheem Mitha a écrit :
>
> r-cran-scales is now in Debian, but r-cran-ggplot2 has not yet been
> updated. I see that r-cran-scales is not installable, because it
> depends on r-cran-munsell, which is not in Debian, at least not
> currently on my mirror for amd64.
Hi Faheem,
r-cran-munsell was submitted to the Debian archive and is currently under
review.
http://ftp-master.debian.org/new/r-cran-munsell_0.4-1.html
However, it contains a binary file, 'sysdata.rda', that is data table in a
compressed format. The question is whether it is generated and refreshed by
the upstream author using a source file that is not distributed in the source
package. Such a work would not be Free according to our principles.
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-med-packaging/2013-August/021177.html
In the newer upstream version 0.4.2, there is a script to generate sysdata.rda
from another file, real.dat, in text format. There is no information on where
this table comes from, how was it created, and what is the preferred way to
modify it.
If you had time to contact the upstream authors and get this point clarified,
that would be a tremendous help. In the meantime, it may be difficult to
update r-cran-ggplot2. I have asked for a temporary exemption, but I did not
receive an answer yet.
http://lists.debian.org/20130807233230.GA12437@falafel.plessy.net
Have a nice day,
PS: I had a quick look at corrmodel (but did not have time to test it), and did
not find obvious problems. For the package containing the R scripts, it may not
be necessary to name it according to the convention for packaged R modules,
since it is not a R module. By the way, is it a software to study clonotypes ?
I have a (much simpler) work on line at http://clonotyper.branchable.com/
Cheers,
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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