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

[Henrik Singmann]

Hi Dirk,

You might have missed the point I made in my email which shows that some
people from Debian (!) took exactly the position you believe does not exist
and removed the binary version of afex from the Debian repositories. I link
to the relevant Debian bug report again below which contains the following
claims:

> I believe the r-cran-afex package violates the GPL. It is released under
GPL3+, however it has GPL2-only dependencies (r-cran-stringr, r-cran-coin,
r-crain-lsmeans), and it calls functions from these packages directly.
> The nature of the interaction (function calls) means that r-cran-afex and
its dependencies constitute a single work, and not two separate programs,
as per the GPL faq: [...]
See here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=800891

While I also believe that this is likely a misinterpretation of the GPL, I
was not in the mood to fight against this and simply changed my package's
license. So while we might all be in agreement here, clearly not everyone
sees it this way.

Best,
Henrik


Am So., 14. Sept. 2025 um 13:38 Uhr schrieb Dirk Eddelbuettel <
edd using debian.org>:

>
> Hi Ilmari,
>
> Am I reading this correctly that you imply that a relationship arising from
> package A calling library(B), or having a more Imports or Depends on it,
> would lead to same GPL "virality" as having actual object code from an
> external package?
>
> The latter case (ie object code and linking) clearly is what the GPL has in
> mind, where virality matters, and where it is commonly applied.  The
> established consensus, as best as I can tell, always has been is that the
> former (an R package calling another R package) is not, and the virality
> argument you are making does not apply.  So I think you are fighting a
> fighting that does not exist.
>
> Cheers, Dirk
>
> --
> dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org
>


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

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