Bug#731599: About the license of the locfit package.
Dear CRAN administrators,
following a license review of the locfit R package helped in 2013 by its
current maintainer [1], we concluded that:
- The original C source code of locfit had a README file where the
copyright holders gave a license that forbids to redistribute the
work for a fee, and that forbids to benchmark the code against other
algorithms, and of course, forbids to remove the license itself[1,2].
- When the locfit R package was initially submitted by one of its
authors, the README file was omitted.
- Nevertheless, there is nothing that indicates that the license does
not apply, as the copyright statements that remain directly refer
to the README file.
For redistributors such as Debian or Fedora, which only include Free
software, the license of locfit C code also precludes redistribution
because it is not Free. Moreover, for binary redistribution by third
parties, the license of the C code is not compatible with the license of
the R code (GPL-2+). Unfortunately, an increasing number of CRAN or
Bioconductor package depend directly or transitively on locfit, which is
a problem for us.
We would like to clarify the license of locfit and if necessary to
convince the authors to use alternatives.
Our first question to you is if you could clarify what, in your point of
view, is the license of the locfit package that CRAN distributes.
During the initial submitssion to CRAN, did you have some explicit
comments from the authors (who are not the sole copyright holders) that
the C code was relicensed to the GPL2+ license, as the DESCRIPTION file
might suggest ? Did the original submitters comment on the absent
README file ?
Then, if the license of locfit is not clearly GPL, can CRAN add (or ask
the maintainer) to add back the original license in the soure directory
of the C code, and reflect it in the README ?
Best regards,
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=731599#27
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20080925025140/http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/departments/sia/project/locfit/index.html
[3] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/locfit/index.html
(Please note that the bug address CCed is publicly archived)
Charles Plessy and Andreas Tille,
for the Debian Med project.
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