Hi all, R-exts currently requests that package authors don't include copies of standard licenses:
> Whereas you should feel free to include a license file in your source > distribution, please do > not arrange to install yet another copy of the GNU COPYING or COPYING.LIB > files but > refer to the copies on https://www.R-project.org/Licenses/ and included in > the R distribution > (in directory share/licenses). Since files named LICENSE or LICENCE will be > installed, > do not use these names for standard license files. I'd like to request that this condition be removed because it makes it overly difficult to ensure that every version of your package (source, tar.gz, binary, and installed) includes the full text of the license. This is important because most open source licenses explicitly require that you include the full text of the license. For example, the GPL faq (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyMustIInclude) states: > Why does the GPL require including a copy of the GPL with every copy of the > program? > (#WhyMustIInclude) > > Including a copy of the license with the work is vital so that everyone who > gets a copy of > the program can know what their rights are. > > It might be tempting to include a URL that refers to the license, instead of > the license > itself. But you cannot be sure that the URL will still be valid, five years > or ten years from > now. Twenty years from now, URLs as we know them today may no longer exist. > > The only way to make sure that people who have copies of the program will > continue > to be able to see the license, despite all the changes that will happen in > the network, > is to include a copy of the license in the program. This analysis by an open source lawyer, https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-by-Line.html#notice-condition, reinforces the same message for the MIT license. Currently we've been working around this limitation by putting a markdown version of the license in LICENSE.md and then adding that to .Rbuildignore (this ensures that the source version on GitHub includes the license even if the CRAN version does not). Ideally, as well as allowing us to include full text of licenses in LICENSE or LICENSE.txt, a LICENSE.md at the top-level of the package would also be explicitly permitted. Hadley -- http://hadley.nz ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
