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Re: Bug#731599: ITP: r-cran-locfit -- GNU R local regression, likelihood and density estimation



Le Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 10:37:48AM +0100, Andreas Tille a écrit :
> 
> Would you agree with the d/copyright of r-cran-locfit in SVN now?

Hi Andreas,

it surely reflects the information given by the the CRAN package maintainer.
However, the lack of the README file mentionned in the file headers is
troubling.

The C code in the R package is clearly related with "locfit-R" and "C-Locfit"
that can be found a the following URL.

    http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/departments/sia/project/locfit/index.html

"locfit-R" contains contradicting statemnts: its README file is very
permissive, but its DESCRIPTION files forbids commercial use.

------------------------ DESCRIPTION file -------------------------------
Package: locfit
Version: 1.1
Title: Local Regression, Likelihood and Density Estimation.
Date: 8/11/2000
Author: Catherine Loader <catherine@research.bell-labs.com>
Maintainer: Catherine Loader <catherine@research.bell-labs.com>
Description: Local Regression, Likelihood and density estimation.
Depends:
License: Free for non-commercial use, see the file COPYRIGHT for details
URL: http://cm.bell-labs.com/stat/project/locfit/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


------------------------ COPYRIGHT file -------------------------------
 The author of the Locfit software is
 Catherine Loader, catherine@research.bell-labs.com
                or cathl@optonline.net

 Copyright (c) 1996-2001 Lucent Technologies, Bell Laboratories.
 Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
 purpose without fee is hereby granted, provided that this entire notice
 is included in all copies of any software which is or includes a copy
 or modification of this software and in all copies of the supporting
 documentation for such software.
 THIS SOFTWARE IS BEING PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
 WARRANTY.  IN PARTICULAR, NEITHER THE AUTHOR NOR LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES
 MAKE ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE
 MERCHANTABILITY OF THIS SOFTWARE OR ITS FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

 SCB (simultaneous confidence bands) code is joint copyright with
 Jiayang Sun (jiayang@sun.stat.cwru.edu)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


"C-Locfit" contains a README file with the the following license:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT ALGORITHMS:
The Locfit implementation has been designed largely from the point
of view of generality: to provide a set of functions that can be
used for as wide a range of local fitting problems as possible.
It is not intended to be the fastest or most efficient implementation
possible. In addition to generality, the code in many places makes
extensive trade-offs made between speed and numerical accuracy (some
of which can be controlled through optional arguments). Many of Locfit's
options will only be used in a small fraction of cases; for other cases,
they add to the cost of overhead (an obvious example is multi-dimensional
fitting: when used in 1-d, many loops reduce to for(i=0;i<1;i++)).
Additionally, the user interfaces (i.e. the R and S-Plus code) add
significantly to the computational overhead. For these reasons, the
Locfit code, as distributed, should not, and can not, be used to
derive meaningful benchmarks, either for the speed or accuracy of algorithms.
Anyone wishing to use Locfit in any kind of comparative benchmark
study must contact and obtain permission from the Author.


COPYRIGHT:

Copyright (c) 1996-2001 Lucent Technologies, Bell Laboratories.
SCB code is
Copyright (c) 1996-2001 Jiayang Sun.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
purpose (with the exceptions noted in `About Algorithms' above)
without fee is hereby granted, and provided that this entire notice is
included in all copies of any software which is or includes a copy or
modification of this software and in all copies of the supporting
documentation for such software.

THIS SOFTWARE IS BEING PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
WARRANTY.  IN PARTICULAR, NEITHER THE AUTHOR NOR LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES
MAKE ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE
MERCHANTABILITY OF THIS SOFTWARE OR ITS FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Altogether, the main problem is that there is no clear indication that the code
has been relicensed to the GPL-2+ in the CRAN package.  If it was, it may be a
good news, that may allow the cufflinks package to move from non-free to main.

Cheers,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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