[Rd] unlicense

[Uwe Ligges]

Dear all,

from "Writing R Extensions":

The string ‘Unlimited’, meaning that there are no restrictions on 
distribution or use other than those imposed by relevant laws (including 
copyright laws).

If a package license restricts a base license (where permitted, e.g., 
using GPL-3 or AGPL-3 with an attribution clause), the additional terms 
should be placed in file LICENSE (or LICENCE), and the string ‘+ file 
LICENSE’ (or ‘+ file LICENCE’, respectively) should be appended to the
corresponding individual license specification.
...
Please note in particular that “Public domain” is not a valid license, 
since it is not recognized in some jurisdictions."

So perhaps you aim for
License: Unlimited

Best,
Uwe Ligges




On 14.01.2017 07:53, Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 5:49 AM, Duncan Murdoch
> <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 13/01/2017 3:21 PM, Charles Geyer wrote:
>>>
>>> I would like the unlicense (http://unlicense.org/) added to R
>>> licenses.  Does anyone else think that worthwhile?
>>>
>>
>> That's a question for you to answer, not to ask.  Who besides you thinks
>> that it's a good license for open source software?
>>
>> If it is recognized by the OSF or FSF or some other authority as a FOSS
>> license, then CRAN would probably also recognize it.  If not, then CRAN
>> doesn't have the resources to evaluate it and so is unlikely to recognize
>> it.
>
> Unlicense is listed in https://spdx.org/licenses/
>
> Debian does include software "licensed" like this, and seems to think
> this is one way (not the only one) of declaring something to be
> "public domain".  The first two examples I found:
>
> https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/r/rasqal/copyright-0.9.29-1
> https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/w/wiredtiger/copyright-2.6.1%2Bds-1
>
> This follows the format explained in
> https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#license-specification,
> which does not explicitly include Unlicense, but does include CC0,
> which AFAICT is meant to formally license something so that it is
> equivalent to being in the public domain. R does include CC0 as a
> shorthand (e.g., geoknife).
>
> https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ says that
>
> <quote>
>
> Licenses currently found in Debian main include:
>
> - ...
> - ...
> - public domain (not a license, strictly speaking)
>
> </quote>
>
> The equivalent for CRAN would probably be something like "License:
> public-domain + file LICENSE".
>
> -Deepayan
>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>>
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