[R-pkg-devel] best practices for handling a mixed-licensed package
On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 5:26 PM Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
On 2 October 2020 at 14:44, Jeff Newmiller wrote: | 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. Have you read R's own doc/COPYRIGHTS ? https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/trunk/doc/COPYRIGHTS In short the opposite of what you just suggest. Also, labels such as "more liberal" or "permissive" or "bogey man" are not exactly unambiguous. Different people can and do have different views here. I would suggest using simpler terms such as "different". What matters is that the licenses permit open source use while ensuring they are compatible which is generally the case these days.
I think this is a bit of an oversimplification, especially given that "compatibility" is not symmetric. For example, you can include MIT license code in a GPL licensed package; you can not include GPL licensed code inside an MIT licensed package. There are some rough guidelines at https://r-pkgs.org/license.html#license-compatibility. Hadley
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