[R-pkg-devel] Error occurring only when I submit to CRAN

[Ivan Krylov]

On Fri, 12 Feb 2021 09:47:37 -0500
Elysée Aristide <ariel92and using gmail.com> wrote:

> I did not want to put restrictions.

Apologies, I could have phrased this better.

If you want the whole of your package to be distributed under the terms
of Apache-2.0 or GPL-3 license (at the user's choosing), the following
DESCRIPTION fragment seems to be the way to express that intent:

License: GPL-3 | file LICENSE

> What is the better thing to put if I do not want to put
> restrictions? The easiest one which allows sharing, copying ...?

Personally, I would keep things simple by choosing only one license.
Exactly which one to choose is a question of personal preference, as
such known to result in flame wars, so I must try to stay neutral.

For R packages, the line between Apache-style "please retain the
copyright notice if you redistribute" licenses and GPL-style "please
share your improvements as source code if you redistribute" is somewhat
blurry, since people typically share source .tar.gz packages anyway,
thus fulfilling the terms of both licenses. The differences only come
into play only when other people distribute the _binary_ packages built
from your source code they _modified_.

Perhaps re-reading WRE 1.1.2
<https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#Licensing> or
consulting websites like <https://beza1e1.tuxen.de/licences/> or
<https://choosealicense.com/> would help?

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan

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