[Rd] alternate licensing for package data?

[Avraham Adler]

To get around this last problem, perhaps you can take advantage of
CRAN's suggestion regarding large data files [1] where they say
"[w]here a large amount of data is required (even after compression),
consideration should be given to a separate data-only package which
can be updated only rarely (since older versions of packages are
archived in perpetuity)." This would allow you to have a different
license for the data package than for the main package. Whether CRAN
will except a file + LICENSE with "please only use academically" or a
CC-BY-NC, is a different question.

Avi

[1] <http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html#Source-packages>

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 4:49 PM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd <at> debian.org> writes:
>
>> On 22 April 2015 at 11:34, Roger Bivand wrote:
>> | While I agree with Martyn with respect to code, documentation, and
>> | vignettes, the point Ben raises is relevant and not obvious. Data sets in
>> | say GLP-licensed packages are on occasion challenged by Debian packagers
>
>         [GPL]
>
>> Not generally the packagers (who get frustrated by this like everybody else)
>> but by the "ftp-masters" teams who look over what gets into the Archive.
>>
>> They are the license reviewers, and gate-keepers.
>>
>> In several cases we (ie "packagers") had to write README.sources to document
>> origins of datasets.  That is generally a little silly as ... R itself
>> already enforces in the .Rd files. So for the packages where I had to do that
>> the README.sources effectively becomes a forward reference to the R docs.
>> But then again the ftp-masters review _thousands_ of packages and having to
>> help their workflow is a small burden.
>>
>> In general, nitpicky licensing issue have been discussed (to mindnumbing
>> length) on the debian-legal list. Those interested in the issue may want to
>> peruse or search the archive:
>>     http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
>>
>> Dirk
>
> Thanks for the information, everyone!  I think I'm just going to
> handle it the sloppy way, providing a .Rd file containing
> documentation and a URL for the data set.  This is not particularly
> good for long-term maintenance, but it seems silly to try to get a
> separate package onto CRAN for a *single* (small) data set.
>
>   For what it's worth, I've been informed by the CRAN maintainers
> that
>
>> 'license' is singular in the CRAN policies, something people
>   sometimes overlook.
>> A package must have a single licence that applies to all of the
>   package (even if alternative licences are offered for all or part),
>   so "GPL except for file XXX" is not viable.
>
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