[R-pkg-devel] license for package

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 31 May 2015 at 22:42, Pieter Eendebak wrote:
| 
| On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 1:56 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
| 
|    
|     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.
| 
| 
| This is a good suggestion. I works for my code, so I can now leave out Eigen
| for the source of the R package.

Excellent. 
    
|     | - my package includes some MIT code (different author)
| 
|     You cannot relicense code by other people.  Their license stays.
| 
| 
| I agree, but still I would like to be able to include source code from other
| people (as long as licenses are compatible). To be concrete: how can one
| distribute a file like msstdint.h (https://code.google.com/p/msinttypes/)
| within an R package and have the licenses properly set in the DESCRIPTION file?

That would probably depend on the license that the file is under, and the
license of the package you want to embed it in. [Goes looking:
BSD-3-clause. That means that you need to figure out if/how you can mix "your
code" in BSD-2 per your earlier mail with BSD-3 per the link.

Now: these things have been discussed ad nauseum over the 20+ years during
which Open Source / Free Software has become so much more prominent. Many
resources exists, see eg http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html and
references therein, as well as http://opensource.org/licenses (which is
almost where your URL above links to as well if you follow its license link).

I am not sure we add value if we direct this list ---- freshly created to
address _packaging problems for R_ to yet another venue debating licenses and
mechanics. There is _nothing_ R specific in that question. 

Dirk

|     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
| 
| 

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