[R-pkg-devel] Fwd: LICENSE file in package including third party library

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 4 February 2020 at 15:04, GD wrote:
| I have a very specific question regarding the licensing of my R package.
| 
| Here is the details: I have an R package under the MIT license so the
| DESCRIPTION file contains the field `License: MIT + file LICENSE` and
| the LICENSE file contains the following required fields:
| 
| ```
| YEAR: yyyy
| COPYRIGHT HOLDER: xx
| ```
| 
| My problem is that my package includes a third party C++ library also
| under MIT license but with different copyright holder and year
| information (available in its own LICENSE file shipped with the library).

So maybe add a file COPYRIGHTS ?
 
| How can I edit the LICENSE file of my package to have both copyright
| information? Am I supposed to merge them without specifying that I
| developed one package and only included another lib?
| 
| For instance, the package RcppEigen (which has a similar structure with
| an included third party C++ lib) specifies the different copyrights in
| the LICENSE file (but the license is different and not MIT, thus the
| requirement regarding the LICENSE file is not the same).

Did you read what it says?  First two lines are

   Please see the included file COPYRIGHTS for per-file (or per-directory)
   details on licenses as well as copyrights.

and that file is included as it comes from inst/COPYRIGHTS.

Dirk

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