[R-pkg-devel] Licenses

[Hugh Parsonage]

It’s necessary but not sufficient to use a licence from license.db

On Fri, 23 Oct 2020 at 3:12 am, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 22/10/2020 11:55 a.m., Marc Schwartz wrote:
> >
> >
> >> On Oct 22, 2020, at 11:19 AM, Marc Schwartz <marc_schwartz using me.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Oct 22, 2020, at 10:21 AM, Kevin R. Coombes <
> kevin.r.coombes using gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> I am developing a package and getting a NOTE from R CMD check about
> licenses and ultimate dependencies on a restrictive license, which I can't
> figure out how to fix.
> >>>
> >>> My package imports flowCore, which has an Artistic-2.0 license.
> >>> But flowCore imports cytolib, which has a license from the Fred
> Hutchinson Cancer Center that prohibits commercial use.
> >>>
> >>> I tried using the same license as flowCore, but still get the NOTE.
> Does anyone know which licenses can be used to be compatible with the Fred
> Hutch license? Or can I just do what flowCore apparently does and ignore
> the NOTE?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>>   Kevin
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi Kevin,
> >>
> >> I have not looked at BioC's licensing requirements, but presumably,
> they are ok with the non-commercial use restrictions placed on users of
> cytolib, thus also on flowCore.
> >>
> >> If you want your package to be on CRAN, those restrictions on users are
> not allowed by CRAN's policy:
> >>
> >> https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html
> >>
> >> "Such packages are not permitted to require (e.g., by specifying in
> ‘Depends’, ‘Imports’ or ‘LinkingTo’ fields) directly or indirectly a
> package or external software which restricts users or usage."
> >>
> >>
> >> Thus, you would seem to need to make a decision on hosting your package
> on CRAN, but without the need to import from flowCore/cytolib, or consider
> hosting your package on BioC, with the attendant restrictions on commercial
> use.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Marc Schwartz
> >
> >
> > Well....
> >
> > Now that I look at:
> >
> >    https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/share/licenses/license.db
> >
> > there are a few licenses listed there that do place restrictions on
> commercial use.
> >
> > These include some Creative Commons Non-Commercial use variants and the
> ACM license.
> >
> > Is the license DB file out of date, or is there an apparent conflict
> with the CRAN policy that I quoted above?
> >
> > Anyone with an ability to comment?
>
> Presumably CRAN would not accept the non-FOSS licenses that are listed
> in license.db, but R could still do computations on them, as described
> in ?library in the "Licenses" section.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
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