Re: Bug#731599: ITP: r-cran-locfit -- GNU R local regression, likelihood and density estimation
Hi Charles,
thanks for your research on this.
On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 07:33:14PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> 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.
The actual source code is exclusively and explicitly mentioning a README
file. I'd tempeted to include just this README file which is not in
conflict with GPL IMHO.
I now remember that we previously tried to contact Catherine and Lucent
but failed.
What do you think?
Kind regards
Andreas.
> ------------------------ 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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>
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