[R-pkg-devel] license for package

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 29 May 2015 at 11:44, Pieter Eendebak wrote:
| Dear developers,
| 
| How can I specify the license for my package when my package includes some
| code with other licenses (and different copyright holders). In particular:
| 
| - my package is BSD 2-clause
| - my packages in includes MPL-2 code (Eigen math library)

Narrow comment: If you do 'LinkingTo: RcppEigen' you do not need to include
the Eigen headers yourself.

| - my package includes some MIT code (different author)

You cannot relicense code by other people.  Their license stays.

You have some choice in how you license _your_ code in the package.  That
said, license "cross-products" have conflicts, but licensing your code under
BSD-2 in the context of the GPL-2'ed R / MIT'ed other parts should be fine.
See the links in Thomas's post for more.

Lastly, in many cases [eg when you link against libR], the "aggregate work"
will be under GPL (>= 2) anyway.  But within the "aggregate work" the code
you added can be under a different license (as long as it is compatible).

Dirk

-- 
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org