[R-pkg-devel] best practices for handling a mixed-licensed package
Hadley offers what you _can_ do, but if you want clarity in the minds of _users_ I would beg you to split the code into two packages. People will likely either be afraid of the GPL bogey man and refrain from utilizing your MIT code as permitted or fail to honor the GPL terms correctly if both are in the same package.
On October 2, 2020 1:16:36 PM PDT, Hadley Wickham <h.wickham at gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 1:51 PM Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote:
A collaborator is arguing that it's a good idea to license one
small
component of a package under the MIT license, while the rest of it remains GPL >=2. Suppose this is feasible. How do I specify the license? As far
as I
can tell from
the DESCRIPTION file should have License: file LICENSE License_is_FOSS: yes License_restricts_use: no But I can't figure out what should go in the LICENSE file. The one file that contains the MIT-licensed components contains the relevant license text in its body. License: GPL (>=2) | MIT + file LICENSE doesn't seem right, because these are not *alternative* licenses.
Would
"GPL (>=2) + file LICENSE" be OK? We could explain the situation in LICENSE.note (WRE says "To include comments about the licensing
rather
than the body of a license, use a file named something like LICENSE.note. ") Could file LICENSE contain The code in this package is licensed under GPL >=2 (see https://www.r-project.org/Licenses/GPL-2, https://www.r-project.org/Licenses/GPL-3, except for <FILE xxx>,
which
is under the MIT license (see <FILE xxx for details>). ?
I have some recommendations at https://r-pkgs.org/license.html#code-you-bundle, but in brief use License: GPL (>= 2) and then explain in LICENSE.note which components have more liberal licenses. Hadley
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.