Message-ID: <CO2PR04MB2214C560C989B50FE250530FF1A40@CO2PR04MB2214.namprd04.prod.outlook.com>
Date: 2016-11-06T02:28:09Z
From: Lenth, Russell V
Subject: [R-pkg-devel] Relicense to GPL-3?
Dear all,
I received an email from a user telling me that another package that depends on my package is licensed GPL(>=3), whereas mine is licensed GPL-2; and that therefore, the other package is in violation of its GPL-3 license. This apparently causes an issue with the Debian packaging system, throwing that other package into the "unstable" category.
Moreover, the correspondent asks me if I would consider changing the license for my package. To what is not specified, but I guess it would be to GPL-3.
I don't really understand why this isn't the other developer's problem and not mine. But on the other hand, I don't want to cause problems for others. The licensing stuff is hard for me to understand - in large part because of low motivation to dig into it; I really would rather think about providing better code and features than all sorts of legal gobble-de-gook. Nonetheless, I guess this stuff is important to some people (e.g., Debian) so I suppose I had better get it right.
My decision to put GPL-2 in the first place was primarily expedience: it seemed like what people wanted. So is GPL-3 "better"? Do I risk anything by changing it? Do I risk anything by not changing it? How much does it matter, really?
Thanks
Russ
Russell V. Lenth? -? Professor Emeritus
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science??
The University of Iowa ?-? Iowa City, IA 52242? USA??
Voice (319)335-0712 (Dept. office)? -? FAX (319)335-3017