Bug#881317: RM: r-bioc-edger -- ROM; No chance to upgrade to latest version due to not fullfillable dependency from r-cran-locfit

[Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org>]

Package: ftp.debian.org
Severity: normal

Hi,

I'm opening this bug also for discussion on the Debian Med list.

The situation with r-bioc-edger is the following:  In the recent package
locfit was only used for testing the package and the test was simply removed
by a patch.  In all later upstream versions locfit became a required part
of the code.

Locfit has a problematic license as discussed in its ITP/RFP #731599.
The about text says explicitly:

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.

Unfortunately several attempts to contact the Author for clarification
failed and I somehow gave up (I'd be more than happy if somebody would
keep on trying since there are other packages affected by the locfit
code).

Since we are not able to upgrade r-bioc-edger in main I think we should
remove it from main to not confuse users.  Usually local installation of
Bioconductor packages is quite simple so fetching a recent version is
not a real problem for the user.

If somebody wants to package r-cran-locfit for non-free and r-bioc-edger
in contrib it has to pass the new queue anyway and this removal will not
harm.

Any opinions?

Kind regards

        Andreas.