[R-pkg-devel] Possible open-source license incompatibilities within R packages

[Henrik Singmann]

Hi all,

Just adding my experience to this thread as a cautionary example against
the notion that it should be no problem to release a package under GPL-3 if
it only calls functions from packages released under GPL-2.

Up to 2017, my afex package (which depended on several GPL-2 packages) was
released under GPL-3. However, then an over-eager debian user reported this
as a violation of the GPL, see here:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=800891
As a consequence, Debian suspended hosting the corresponding binary package
(r-cran-afex) until I changed my license to GPL (≥ 2).

I in principle agree with both Duncan and Hadley position, but if someone
more powerful (in this case the Debian package admin) has other opinions
there was not much I could do.

Best,
Henrik

Am Do., 11. Sept. 2025 um 23:32 Uhr schrieb Hadley Wickham <
h.wickham using gmail.com>:

> On Mon, Sep 8, 2025 at 2:08 PM Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On 2025-09-08 10:55 a.m., Ilmari Tamminen wrote:
> > > I would like to release my R code under GPL-3. The code depends on a
> > package (lme4) that itself uses "GPL >= 2", but which has upstream
> > dependencies (minqa, numDeriv, rbibutils) that are GPL-2 only.  According
> > to what I've read (see below), GPL-2 and GPL-3 are incompatible. Are the
> > GPL-2 upstream licenses a problem for my GPL-3 R code? If so, are there
> > recommended ways of resolving this?
> >
> > My understanding is that the licenses of other packages are only
> > relevant if you are incorporating their code into yours and would like
> > to release the combined work.
> >
> > If your code uses some other package but you are not distributing the
> > other package then their license doesn't affect your package.
> >
> > For example, many packages (including R itself) are written to use
> > Windows functions, but since they don't distribute copies of those
> > functions the fact that Windows isn't open source doesn't matter.
> >
>
> This is my belief too, and I've written a bit about it at
> https://r-pkgs.org/license.html#code-you-use
>
> Hadley
>
> --
> http://hadley.nz
>
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>
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>


-- 
Dr. Henrik Singmann
Associate Professor, Experimental Psychology
University College London (UCL), UK
http://singmann.org

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