[Rd] legitimate use of :::

[Hadley Wickham]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Trevor Davis <trevor.l.davis at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is a good solution. Do I need to specify the original License etc? And
>> what about a helper function such as stats:::n.knots? This will not appear
>> in the manual of my package. Is it sufficient in this case to document the
>> authorship in the source (and perhaps a README as you suggested)?
>
> If the license is the same as your projects you just need the proper
> copyright notice.
> As Hadley suggests it is a good idea to also document the appropriate authorship
> in the Authors field in the DESCRIPTION as well.
>
> If the license is different but permissive than then it typically doesn't need
> go into DESCRIPTION or a separate LICENSE file but the permissive
> license text does usually need to either go
> into inst/COPYRIGHT or at the top of the relevant code file:
>
>   https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2007/gpl-non-gpl-collaboration.html
>   https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2012/ManagingCopyrightInformation.html

That may be true for other open source projects, but that is not the
interpretation that cran maintainers have used in the past.

Hadley

-- 
Chief Scientist, RStudio
http://had.co.nz/