[R-pkg-devel] best practices for handling a mixed-licensed package
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 https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-exts.html#Licensing 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
http://hadley.nz [[alternative HTML version deleted]]