callr update from CRAN

[gaborcsardi]

Prof Brian Ripley
8:59 AM (5 hours ago)
to me, CRAN

This has

Author: Gábor Csárdi [aut, cre, cph], Winston Chang [aut], Posit
Software, PBC [cph, fnd], Mango Solutions [cph, fnd]

but LICENSE says

COPYRIGHT HOLDER: callr authors

which is completely different. And what is 'Mango Solutions' --
searching in the UK finds a recruitment company. As the manual says

"(copyright holder, which should be the legal name for an institution or
corporate body)"

Having multiple copyright owners is problematic: UK government advice is

"Where two or more people have created a single work protected by
copyright and the contribution of each author is not distinct
from that of the other(s), those people may be considered joint
owners."

and a work by an employee is normally copyright by the employer or
employee, not both.

So did Winston Chang contribute as an employee and his work is copyright
by one of the companies alluded to?

No file in the package names a copyright holder, and if there are
multiple owners (it is implausible that all those named are joint
owners, including of WC's work) the files need to note their copyright
owner.

This needs immediate clarification.

--
Brian D. Ripley, ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford

[eddelbuettel]

Thanks for taking care of this -- but could you consider changing the release note from 'no changes' which, speaking as a comment about the released tarball, isn't exactly true. 'No changes in user facing code' is better, maybe 'Changes only to package metadata' more informative.

FWIW I saw your comment and this diffstat at the same time and figured they could not both be true. CRAN can be a PITA but in the long run the pressure for quality is good. Thanks for coping!

[gaborcsardi]

Closed by #274.