[R-pkg-devel] Rcpp Copyright Query

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 12 December 2017 at 13:40, Meabh McCurdy wrote:
| I am currently in the process of submitting a new R package to CRAN. This package uses the Rcpp package, as stated in the 'LinkingTo' section of the Description file.

So far no problem.

| I am currently missing two copyright holders relating to the Rcpp package:
| - Copyright (C) 2010 - 2012 Dirk Eddelbuettel and Romain Francois

"Missing"? Sorry, but who is missing what?

Presumably you are not _including_ Rcpp in your package and as such you are
not _(re-)distributing_ the sources over which other people have a copyright.

And for who those people are, see DESCRIPTION included with the package, not
debian/copyright (which is only in the source repo as I also happen to build
the Debian package from there but otherwise irrelevant to CRAN and not
installed in the CRAN sources).

| As far as I am aware, if the copyright holders are not authors of the package an optional 'Copyright' field can be used. Is there a licensing file or copyright file for the Rcpp package that is required and I can include in my package under the inst directory.
| I'm not entirely sure this is the correct solution , other suggestions are welcome.

I can't follow the logic of your argument.  Can you explain what I would have
to do with your package---other than maybe some pride and ownership in seeing
yet another package use Rcpp?  

Your code is your code, and (typically) copyrighted by you (or maybe your
employer) and possibly coauthors. And what license you choose is also up to
you provided is compatiable and allowed on CRAN.

"Writing R Extensions" delivers the goods on all that.

Dirk

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