[R] Installing packages based on the license

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 26/11/2008 4:43 PM, Ted Mendum wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I would like have an automatic way to avoid installing packages that I cannot use due to license restrictions.
> 
> For example, the conf.design package is limited to non-commercial use, and since I work for a for-profit business, I cannot use it.
> 
> I found out about the license terms of conf.design by chance; I would like to avoid any possibility of a mistake in the future.
> 
> Is there some clever combination of grep and install.packages that I could use to limit my downloads to, say, GPL-only packages?

In theory, you should be able to look at the License field of 
available.packages(fields="License") and limit yourself to those with 
acceptable licenses.  However, I don't think CRAN reports on the license.

However, after you have installed a set of packages, you can scan the 
set of licenses using this code:

installed.packages(fields="License")[,"License"]

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Ted
> 
> 
> Ted Mendum | Senior Scientist
> Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry
> 66 Cummings Park, Woburn, MA 01801
> 
> p:   781-937-9000   
> f:    781-937-9001
> 
> ted.mendum at warnerbabcock.com
> www.warnerbabcock.com
> 
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