Skip to content

CRAN policies - citing others

2 messages · Gildas Mazo, Hadley Wickham

Gildas Mazo
# 
Dear R users,

we try to submit a package to CRAN. One of our function pbcOptim.R uses lbfgsb.cpp which is a slight modification of optim.c. In the documentation for pbcOptim.R we said

"The code for pbcOptim is based on that of \code{\link{optim}}. In particular, pbcOptim calls /src/lbfgsb.cpp which is a slight adaptation of lbfgsb.c and optim.c part of the R software (http://www.r-project.org/). See \code{\link{optim}} and ?optim."

However, CRAN responded that we were not the authors of lbfgsb.cpp and we did not mention them. Do we have to spell their names explicitely? In the documentation for pbcOptim.R? In the file DESCRIPTION? In the file lbfgsb.cpp?

Thanks you very much for your help
Hadley Wickham
# 
I believe this is what you should do:

* In the  lbfgsb.cpp from base R, include the GPL blurb and R
copyright holders. Also add your own names. (see e.g.
https://github.com/hadley/pryr/blob/master/src/typename.cpp)

* In the DESCRIPTION, add the R core team as a contributor,
https://github.com/hadley/pryr/blob/master/DESCRIPTION

* Note that you should also license your package with a GPL compatible
license. If you choose something other than GPL-2, you'll need to use
a manual LICENSE file, which is a hassle for all involved.

Hadley
On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 6:10 AM, Gildas Mazo <gildas.mazo at inria.fr> wrote: