[R-pkg-devel] best LICENSE practices: AGPL-3 + LaTeX Project Public License

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13/07/2021 6:40 p.m., Steven Scott wrote:
> I'll let others discuss the technical details of how to set up the licence
> files.  I want to make sure you know that using AGPL is a good way to
> ensure that nobody in tech uses your package.  Maybe that's intended, but
> when I was at Google the ONLY software we were specifically prohibited from
> using was code released under AGPL. I won't try to convince you of that
> being a good or bad thing, but wanted to make sure you were aware of it.

For some projects that makes AGPL a good choice.  For example, the free 
version of RStudio is licensed under the AGPL, so there's some extra 
motivation for companies like Google to pay for the commercial license.

That probably doesn't apply to Ben's project, though.  It would likely 
require all copyright holders to agree on a second non-open license.

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 2:11 PM Ben Bolker <bbolker using gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>>     In the process of trying to get a package to build successfully on
>> r-hub's Fedora platform, I had to add a whole bunch of LaTeX .sty files
>> to the vignette directory.  One of these was collectbox.sty, which
>> triggers the NOTE
>>
>> ---
>> NOTE
>> The following files contain a license that requires
>> distribution of original sources:
>>     ‘collectbox.sty’
>> ---
>>
>>     The licensing/copyright information in collectbox.sty is as follows:
>>
>>
>> %% The original source files were:
>> %%
>> %% collectbox.dtx  (with options: `collectbox.sty')
>> %%
>> %% IMPORTANT NOTICE:
>> %%
>> %% For the copyright see the source file.
>> %%
>> %% Any modified versions of this file must be renamed
>> %% with new filenames distinct from collectbox.sty.
>> %%
>> %% For distribution of the original source see the terms
>> %% for copying and modification in the file collectbox.dtx.
>> %%
>> %% This generated file may be distributed as long as the
>> %% original source files, as listed above, are part of the
>> %% same distribution. (The sources need not necessarily be
>> %% in the same archive or directory.)
>> %% Copyright (C) 2012 by Martin Scharrer <martin using scharrer-online.de>
>> %% --------------------------------------------------------------------
>> %% This work may be distributed and/or modified under the
>> %% conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3
>> %% of this license or (at your option) any later version.
>> %% The latest version of this license is in
>> %%   http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt
>> %% and version 1.3 or later is part of all distributions of LaTeX
>> %% version 2005/12/01 or later.
>>
>>      So I put collectbox.dtx into the inst/misc directory in the package.
>> Fine.
>>
>>    Now, what do I need to do to (1) make sure that my DESCRIPTION file is
>> correct and (2) hopefully, suppress the NOTE so I don't have to explain
>> it to the CRAN maintainers every time?
>>
>> * Do I change the LICENCE line (which is currently AGPL-3)? According to
>> https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#Licensing it would
>> seem I would have to switch to "file LICENCE" (adding a
>> "Licence_is_FOSS: yes"), where "LICENCE" contains something like
>>
>> package code licensed under AGPL-3; file vignettes/collectbox.sty is
>> under the LaTeX Project Public License (source provided in
>> misc/collectbox.dtx)
>>
>> ? Should it say "file LICENCE" or "AGPL-3 + file LICENCE" ?
>>
>> * Do I just include the files without comment, since I have complied (as
>> far as I can tell) with the terms of the LPPL?
>>
>> * Is there a way to signal to R CMD check that I *have* complied with
>> the terms?
>>
>>     cheers
>>      Ben Bolker
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>>
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>