[R-pkg-devel] GPL + other licence
Thanks to all for your helpful replies. It seems reasonable to consider that the whole package is indeed licensed under GPL >= 3, and I can therefore remove the LICENSE file. The Qhull COPYING.txt notice is included in the inst/doc directory, as required by the Qhull licence, so I think all should be OK. If the CRAN maintainers are happy with this proposal, that will resolve a major R-packaging headache, so thanks again. Best wishes, David.
On Wed 11 Apr 2018 at 16:58 BST, Martyn Plummer <plummerm at iarc.fr> wrote:
I agree with Brian. This type of license is classified by the Free Software Foundation as "lax" or "permissive" because it does not prevent incorporation of the code into proprietary software. Here is what Richard Stallman has to say: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ license-compatibility.en.html "[L]ax licenses are usually compatible with any copyleft license. In the combined program, the parts that came in under lax licenses still carry them, and the combined program as a whole carries the copyleft license." Hence you can license your package under the GPL. Martyn On Tue, 2018-04-10 at 08:14 -0500, Brian G. Peterson wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see why the entire package can't be released under GPL, while also respecting the QHull license for the QHull code and the derived QHull portions. Many existing R packages released under GPL, and R itself, include BSD and MIT licensed code. The QHull license is a very permissive license, basically BSD or MIT- like in its permissions. BSD and MIT code may be included in GPL'd code, as long as its license (inclusion of the copyright notice, etc.) is also included where required. GPL applies to the entire work, in this case the R package. I think you should discuss this with the CRAN maintainers and release the package under GPL. Regards, Brian
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