[Rd] Rcpp: Clarifying the meaning of GPL?

[Dominick Samperi]

I wrote the Rcpp library and the RcppTemplate package to make it
easier for developers to contribute packages to the R community.
In addition to providing detailed documentation on
package creation it provides a clean object mapping between
R anc C++ that helps developers to implement packages that
benefit from the performance of C++ and the flexibility of R.

The package named 'Rcpp' was forked from my work and
is being developed independently, in spite of many protests
from me. A diff of Rcpp_0.6.6 and RcppTemplate_5.3 (written
several years ago), both available at CRAN, will show that
Rcpp added a few cut-and-paste changes. (The latest release
of Rcpp has been split up and reorganized so that it would
be difficult to find the differences now.)

More importantly, while GPL gives developers the right to
make changes (without the permission of the original
contributor) it explicitly states that these changes should
not leave misleading impressions about the original
developer.

Unfortunately, GPL does not spell out what it means to
be misleading. I think using the same name ('Rcpp')
as a library still being developed by the original author,
and listing yourself as a copyright holder on source code
alongside the original author without that person's
permission counts as misleading, but that is my
opinion.

I am posting this message seeking the opinion of others
in the R community. Perhaps by sharing ideas we can
"self-organize" and find an interpretation of GPL that
benefits all R users, and all package contributors as well.

A minimal resolution of this issue would be to simply
rename 'Rcpp' to something like 'RInside', or to something
else that is not misleading.

Thanks,
Dominick