[R-pkg-devel] [Tagged] Re: roxygen style documentation for data sets

[Jeff Newmiller]

None of us here are lawyers, but a simple google search should take you to discussions such as [1]. There is a long history of debates about the upsides and downsides of restricting how people can use your source code.

My short take is that a GPL license prevents anyone from stuffing your code into a proprietary box and selling it without your consent... they have to share just as much as you did. MIT doesn't prevent this hiding, so people working for companies are less likely to have trouble getting approval to use your code... but you may not have any access to their fixes either. Just different definitions of "freedom" playing out their implications.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License#:~:text=The%20GNU%20GPL%20is%20explicit,license%20does%20not%20discuss%20patents.

On September 21, 2023 11:45:34 AM PDT, Michael L Friendly <friendly using yorku.ca> wrote:
>Yes, if usethis is the most useful place for this to be, I suppose I should first flag this as an issue, and then issue a PR for my code.
>
>I don't understand the fine distinctions between GPL-2 and MIT licensed code.
>
>Perhaps some other developers can chime in here.
>
>-Michael
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ivan Krylov <krylov.r00t using gmail.com> 
>Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2023 1:37 PM
>To: Michael L Friendly <friendly using yorku.ca>
>Cc: r-package-devel using r-project.org
>Subject: Re: [R-pkg-devel] roxygen style documentation for data sets
>
>В Thu, 21 Sep 2023 16:33:35 +0000
>Michael L Friendly <friendly using yorku.ca> пишет:
>
>> I called this function `use_data_doc()`, because I thought it would be 
>> a welcome addition to the usethis package.
>> 
>> I hope that someone on this list can advise how to make such a 
>> function available to all R package developers.
>
>Perhaps a pull request to https://github.com/r-lib/usethis/pulls ?
>
>Should this function be considered a work derived from R? If yes, then (in my non-lawyer opinion) it retains its ownership by R Core and being licensed under GPL-2, which may be a problem for MIT-licensed usethis.
>
>--
>Best regards,
>Ivan
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-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.