[Rd] unlicense

[Karl Millar]

Please don't use 'Unlimited' or 'Unlimited + ...'.

Google's lawyers don't recognize 'Unlimited' as being open-source, so
our policy doesn't allow us to use such packages due to lack of an
acceptable license.  To our lawyers, 'Unlimited + file LICENSE' means
something very different than it presumably means to Uwe.

Thanks,

Karl

On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 12:10 AM, Uwe Ligges
<ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de> wrote:
> 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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>>
>>
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