[Incubator] Initiating the process for R-Spatial to become an OSGeo community project

Jody Garnett jody.garnett at gmail.com
Thu Jul 8 14:57:05 PDT 2021 

Edzer:

I have setup "edzer" with "project author" permissions to create a project
on the osgeo website, when you have something ready (or need any assistance
figuring out wordpress) let us know. The page for service providers
<https://www.osgeo.org/community/getting-started-osgeo/add-service-provider/>
is a good example of how everything is broken into tabs.

Having a dual license (MIT and GPL-2) is just fine and can really be used
to reflect your participants values etc.... Indeed a dual license
approaches can be very valuable as each encourages a different balance of
responsibility and assurances.

Examples for your team:

   - The JTS project has a dual license (LICENSE.md
   <https://github.com/locationtech/jts/blob/master/LICENSES.md>) of BSD
   (permissive license promoting wide adoption) and Eclipse License (promoting
   some projection against patents and so forth). This is a good example of
   how to do a dual license.
   - When you have a dual license approach some care is needed in accepting
   contributions from others: As an example we have run into the GeoServer
   project which as GPL (with a small exception allowing some eclipse license
   code). Normally we collect a CLA for all contributions (so we have the
   ability to donate code to other projects like GeoTools and JTS). Recently
   some folks collected some code that was abandoned and the original authors
   were no longer available to sign a CLA. The result is our codebase now has
   some extensions with LICENSE.md files in specific directories.
   - It can also be a challenge to communicate what is going on when
   working with a codebase that has collected influence from different
   sources.  I just updated the GeoTools codebase with its core LGPL
   LICENSE.md <https://github.com/geotools/geotools/blob/main/LICENSE.md>,
   followed by a clear notice
   <https://github.com/geotools/geotools/blob/main/licenses/README.md>
describing
   listing all the individual licenses
   <https://github.com/geotools/geotools/tree/main/licenses> for content we
   have collected from the internet. As an example the project includes the
   EPSG database so EPSG.md
   <https://github.com/geotools/geotools/blob/main/licenses/EPSG.md> is
   there as a data distribution license.

While the authoritative place for distribution may be CRAN, the source code
that generates the work is what would be reviewed when auditing a codebase.
Having the license information alongside your code is consistent with the
GPL-2 header "*You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program*" snippet, and protects your ass-ets.

Licenses are all about communicating intent, by choosing github as your
forge it is best to follow their conventions for communicating license
information to avoid confusion.

Although we are focused on the source code (being an open source
foundation), your distribution via CRAN (
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sf/index.html) is ... incomplete:

1) link to LICENSE: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sf/LICENSE is
just a copyright declaration

*YEAR: 2016-2020*
*COPYRIGHT HOLDER: Edzer Pebesma*


2) link to GPL-2: https://cran.r-project.org/web/licenses/GPL-2 seems okay
3) link to MIT: https://cran.r-project.org/web/licenses/MIT has not yet
filled in the MIT license (just has the template):

Based on http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

*This is a template. Complete and ship as file LICENSE the following 2*
*lines (only)*

*YEAR:*
*COPYRIGHT HOLDER: *

*and specify as*

*License: MIT + file LICENSE*

*Copyright (c) <YEAR>, <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>*

*Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining*
*a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the*
*"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including*
*without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,*
*distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to*
*permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to*
*the following conditions:*

*The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be*
*included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.*

*THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,*
*EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF*
*MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND*
*NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE*
*LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION*
*OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION*
*WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.*

--
Jody Garnett


On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 at 13:35, Edzer Pebesma <edzer.pebesma at uni-muenster.de>
wrote:

> Dear Jody, thanks for your efforts and positive response!
>
> I'll try to answer your questions:
>
>  > Q: What is the project license for sf? Can you clearly indicate it in
> a LICENSE.md file? Or would that mess up your build?
>
> The licence is MIT or GPL-2; I guess that that effectively means MIT,
> but trying to express appreciation when others share modifications
> they'd redistribute.
>
> It wouldn't be a problem to add LICENSE.md, I didn't do that because the
> authoritative place for released versions is CRAN, which has a landing
> page for each CRAN package; the one for sf is:
> https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sf/index.html where you can see
> that the licenses are listed with to their corresponding texts. If I
> would add a LICENSE.md, it duplicates and could be one more source for
> confusion. This is also the reason we don't do github tags or releases,
> as CRAN archives all releases; look for "Old sources", which in this
> case points to all CRAN releases of sf:
> https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/sf/
>
> For most R developers, github is a convenience, but CRAN is the place
> where we release, and where information is complete.
>
>
>  > Q: What is your osgeo id? So you can be setup with website access to
> make a project page
>
> My osgeo ID is edzer
>
> Many regards,
> --
> Edzer Pebesma
> Institute for Geoinformatics
> Heisenbergstrasse 2, 48151 Muenster, Germany
> Phone: +49 251 8333081
>
>
>
> Previous message:
>
> First up it is great to see such a strong R community, I have even seen
> presentations on the *sf* in my local university down "geogeeks" meetup
> (back when we could you know meet up).
>
> I was checking in to see if you had made any progress towards an osgeo
> project page, and I did not see anything yet...
>
> Checking your github repositories such as https://github.com/r-spatial/sf
>
> 1 Be geospatial
> - README.md clearly spatial topic :)
>
> 2. Have a free license or open source license
> - sf LICENSE <-- does not actually list an open source license (so you
> would trick github license detection)
> - mapview was clearly GPL
> - Searching the codebase shows
> https://github.com/r-spatial/sf/blob/master/DESCRIPTION#L50 indicating
> some
> combination of MIT and GPL (what is your thought here?)
>
> 3. Welcome participation and new contributors.
> - Well I have personally experienced your enthusiastic community, ... but
> this is a bit more focused on having a policy for things like pull
> requests.
> - Massive number of closed pull requests from a wide range of contributors
> - For sf I did not find a CONTRIBUTING.md file (shown to folks making a
> pull request) but the README has heading about contributing which is great
>
> So this looks okay, but I have questions:
>
> Q: What is the project license for sf? Can you clearly indicate it in a
> LICENSE.md file? Or would that mess up your build?
> Q: What is your osgeo id? So you can be setup with website access to make a
> project page
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Jody Garnett
>
>
> On Mon, 22 Feb 2021 at 06:21, Robin Lovelace <rob00x at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  > We would like to apply, as the 'R-Spatial' community, to become an OSGeo
>  > affiliated organisation.
>  >
>  > We are a diverse group with a shared interest in developing free and
> open
>  > tools for the reproducible analysis of geographic data. R is a
> popular and
>  > rapidly growing language for statistical computing and 'data science'.
> It
>  > is already part of the OSGeo ecosystem: the OSGeo Live distribution
> ships
>  > with R <https://github.com/OSGeo/OSGeoLive/blob/master/bin/install_R.sh
> >
>  > and R integrates with established OSGeo projects such as GRASS GIS
>  > <https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/R_statistics>, SAGA
>  > <https://cran.r-project.org/package=RSAGA> and QGIS
>  > <https://docs.qgis.org/3.16/en/docs/>. R tutorials (which would benefit
>  > from being updated) are listed on the tutorials listed on OSGeo's old
>  > website <http://old.www.osgeo.org/educational_content>. We would like
> to
>  > update existing content and create new OSGeo-affiliated tutorials for
> using
>  > R-Spatial software. Many R-Spatial projects have support from the R
>  > Consortium <https://www.r-consortium.org/>, opening the possibility of
>  > stronger links between R and OSGeo at an organisational level.
>  >
>  > After a discussion on our GitHub Organisation at github.com/r-spatial,
> it
>  > is clear that closer links could be mutually beneficial. Collaboration
> is
>  > at the heart of open source software and the R community has a long
>  > history. The history of R-GRASS GIS bridges, for example, covers more
> than 20
>  > years <https://doi.org/10.1016/S0098-3004(00)00057-1> and goes in both
>  > directions. R interfaces enable a wide range of people to access
>  > OSGeo-supported software from a reproducible command-line interface.
>  >
>  > Continued development and innovation in R-OSGeo links are illustrated
> the
>  > qgisprocess <https://github.com/paleolimbot/qgisprocess> package, which
>  > motivated positive changes in the QGIS source code (see
>  > github.com/paleolimbot/qgisprocess/issues/21). The R-Spatial community
>  > relies on the OSGeo projects GDAL, PROJ and GEOS for data access and
>  > geographic operations. Core R-Spatial packages sf, raster and terra use
>  > bindings to the libraries for much of the heavy lifting and many
> thousands
>  > of people using R for spatial research (often without knowing) run OSGeo
>  > support code every day. We would like to support the ongoing work of
> these
>  > vital components of the wider community that is represented by the
>  > OSGeo-affiliated conference series FOSS4G. We also anticipate
> benefits from
>  > being part of the wider OSGeo community and would like to be more active
>  > members of the wider movement advocating free and open source
> software for
>  > geospatial.
>  >
>  > 'R-Spatial' can be loosely defined as the ecosystem of code, projects
> and
>  > people using R for working with and adding value to spatial data. A
>  > manifestation of the wider R-Spatial community is the friendly,
> vibrant and
>  > diverse range of voices using the #rspatial
>  > <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23rspatial> tag on Twitter. For the
>  > purposes of OSGeo supported *software* projects however, we define
>  > R-Spatial as the packages found at https://github.com/r-spatial/ (which
>  > includes sf, stars, mapview, gstat, spdep and many other popular
> packages
>  > for working with spatial data) and https://github.com/rspatial/ (which
>  > includes packages raster and terra). A (possibly incomplete) list with R
>  > packages that directly link to OSGEO libraries is found here
>  >
> <
> https://github.com/r-spatial/discuss/wiki/R-packages-that-use-the-OSGEO-stack-in-System-Requirements
> :>.
>  > Thousands of R packages depend on these packages one way or another.
>  >
>  > We would like to initiate the process needed for R-Spatial to eventually
>  > become an OSGeo community project, by achieving the first two of the
> three
>  > steps as outlined on the Incubation Committee web page
>  >
> <
> https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Incubation_Committee#Step_1:_Add_OSGeo_Website_Project_Page
> >
>  > :
>  >
>  >    - We would like to create an OSGeo web page with information about
> key
>  >    packages in the 'R-spatial stack', including how they relate to OSGeo
>  >    projects
>  >    - We would like to become an OSGeo Community Project
>  >
> <
> https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Incubation_Committee#Step_2:_Join_Community_Projects_Program
> >
>  >
>  > All the best,
>  >
>  > R-Spatial developers and contributors, including: Robin Lovelace, Roger
>  > Bivand, Edzer Pebesma, Tim Appelhans, Robert Hijmans, Jakub Nowosad,
> Nick
>  > Bearman, Emmanuel Blondel, Andy Teucher, Marynia Kolak, Timothée Giraud,
>  > Ahmadou Dicko, Andrea Gilardi, Lorena Abad, Martijn Tennekes
>  > _______________________________________________
>  > Incubator mailing list
>  > Incubator at lists.osgeo.org
>  > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator
>  >
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