From plummerm at iarc.fr  Wed Apr 22 11:02:33 2015
From: plummerm at iarc.fr (Martyn Plummer)
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2015 09:02:33 +0000
Subject: [Rd] alternate licensing for package data?
In-Reply-To: <5536DBD8.7070500@mcmaster.ca>
References: <5536DBD8.7070500@mcmaster.ca>
Message-ID: <1429693353.24336.15.camel@iarc.fr>

I think this is covered well by the CRAN repository policy:
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html 

The two key license requirements are that: 
1) CRAN must have a perpetual license to distribute the package
2) The package license should be listed here: 
https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/share/licenses/license.db
Packages with licenses not included in that list are generally not
accepted.

However, there are exceptions, and you can find some by searching for
"non-commercial site:cran.r-project.org" on Google. See also section
1.1.2 of the Writing R Extensions manual for an explanation.

Personally, I would not want to add the extra complexity to a package
that is otherwise GPL.

Martyn

On Tue, 2015-04-21 at 19:23 -0400, Ben Bolker wrote:
>   Does anyone have speculations about the implications of the GPL for
> data included in a package, or more generally for restricting use of data?
> 
>   The specific use case is that I have a package which is otherwise
> GPL (version unspecified at present).  There are various data sets
> included, but they are all essentially in the public domain.  I'm
> thinking about including another data set, but the original author of
> that data might like to impose some reasonable restrictions (e.g.
> please don't use in an academic publication without explicit
> permission ...)  Would such rules be expected to be compatible with
> CRAN rules?  Will having the package be "GPL except for file XXX, see
> LICENSE" mess things up horribly?
> 
>   I can of course make the data available for download and include a
> link, and/or make a special package that contains only these data, but
> it would seem to be more convenient for end users, and more
> future-proof, to put everything in one place.
> 
>   I know I will eventually need to take this up with CRAN, but I'm
> looking for reasonably informed opinions/suggestions ...
> 
>   cheers
>     Ben Bolker
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________
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> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

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[Rd] alternate licensing for package data?
Martyn Plummer