Skip to content
Prev 9417 / 12125 Next

[R-pkg-devel] LICENSE file in an R package for CRAN submission

You have two choices:

* put LICENSE in your .Rbuildignore file so that it shows up on Github 
but is excluded from the package

* follow the instructions in 
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#Licensing to refer to 
LICENSE in your DESCRIPTION file. However, CRAN generally prefers that 
you use a standard license ("GPL-2", "GPL-3"), to make it easier for 
them to know that you've really complied with their openness 
requirements, and that you *not* include a license file that is 
redundant with that spec:

 > Whereas you should feel free to include a license file in your source 
distribution, please do not arrange to install yet another copy of the 
GNU COPYING or COPYING.LIB files but refer to the copies on 
https://www.R-project.org/Licenses/ and included in the R distribution 
(in directory share/licenses). Since files named LICENSE or LICENCE will 
be installed, do not use these names for standard license files. To 
include comments about the licensing rather than the body of a license, 
use a file named something like LICENSE.note.
On 2023-08-09 11:06 a.m., Emanuele Cordano wrote: