Demo data sets in spatstat R package

[Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu>]

Hi Adrian,

I would like to package spatstat for the Debian GNU Linux distribution.
I stumbled upon it as a new dependency of R surveillance but it might be
interesting in itself for the Debian Science team that has the goal to
support scientists with a decent set of software fully included into
Debian.

When I prepared the packaging I stumbled over the data directory that
contains *.rda files which are in binary format.  Debian does not permit
binary data without source in its official archive and thus I would
kindly like to ask whether there are some human readable sources of
these data files.

When checking your release tarball I can only find hints like:

data/amacrine.rda
--> man/amacrine.Rd

  Hughes' Amacrine Cell Data
  Austin Hughes' data: a point pattern of displaced amacrine cells in
  the retina of a rabbit.  A marked point pattern.

  source:
  Peter Diggle, personal communication

or

data/residualspaper.rda
--> man/residualspaper.Rd says:

  Data and Code From JRSS Discussion Paper on Residuals
  This dataset contains the point patterns used as examples in the paper
  of Baddeley et al (2005).

  source:
  Data kindly supplied by Professor Y. Ogata with kind permission of
  Prof M. Tanemura.

etc.

The "source" is nothing that would qualify as a "license" to distribute
the data with the Debian distribution.

So my question is:  Are there any real sources for these data together
with licenses that define a clear permission for distribution?

If not how important are these data to run spatstat?  We could simply
drop the data files if they are not urgently needed.

Kind regards and thanks for providing spatstat as free software

       Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de