[R] Licensing data sets

[Deepayan Sarkar]

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 8:05 PM, Christian Lederer
<christianlederer at t-online.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> i am working on a biosignal package which has a data set package
> as dependency (e.g. for the examples).
> This data set package will include patient data.
> Of course, the patients will be asked for their informed
> consent, and the data will be anonymized.
>
> I am not sure about the appropriate license for the
> data set package.
>
> On the CRAN, there are many packages containing data sets
> which are under GPL.
> However, the GPL seems not appropriate for me, since it is
> only about software, not about data.
> Furthermore, i have to inform the patients about the license
> in order to obtain their consent, and the GPL seems too
> complicated for this purpose.
>
> Has anybody an idea which license to use?

Data is not usually considered creative work, so does not come under
the purview of copyright law, so GPL etc. do not apply. The exact
rules are not clear though [1].

In your case, all you probably need to provide is permission to
redistribute the data, after getting such permission from the
patients.

-Deepayan

[1] http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/778789.html