The Free Software Foundation maintains a list of free and GPL-compatible software licenses here:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#Unlicense It appears that Unlicense is considered a free and GPL-compatible license; however, the page does suggest using CC0 instead (which is indeed a license approved / recognized by CRAN). CC0 appears to be the primary license recommended by the FSF for software intended for the public domain. On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 8:32 PM, Karl Millar via R-devel < r-devel@r-project.org> wrote: > Unfortunately, our lawyers say that they can't give legal advice in > this context. > > My question would be, what are people looking for that the MIT or > 2-clause BSD license don't provide? They're short, clear, widely > accepted and very permissive. Another possibility might be to > dual-license packages with both an OSI-approved license and > whatever-else-you-like, e.g. 'MIT | <my_unusual_license>', but IIUC > there's a bunch more complexity there than just using an OSI-approved > license. > > Karl > > > On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 3:35 PM, Uwe Ligges > <lig...@statistik.tu-dortmund.de> wrote: > > > > > > On 18.01.2017 00:13, Karl Millar wrote: > >> > >> Please don't use 'Unlimited' or 'Unlimited + ...'. > >> > >> Google's lawyers don't recognize 'Unlimited' as being open-source, so > >> our policy doesn't allow us to use such packages due to lack of an > >> acceptable license. To our lawyers, 'Unlimited + file LICENSE' means > >> something very different than it presumably means to Uwe. > > > > > > > > Karl, > > > > thanks for this comment. What we like to hear now is a suggestion what > the > > maintainer is supposed to do to get what he aims at, as we already know > that > > "freeware" does not work at all and was hard enough to get to the > > "Unlimited" options. > > > > We have many CRAN requests asking for what they should write for > "freeware". > > Can we get an opinion from your layers which standard license comes > closest > > to what these maintainers probably aim at and will work more or less > > globally, i.e. not only in the US? > > > > Best, > > Uwe > > > > > > > > > >> Thanks, > >> > >> Karl > >> > >> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 12:10 AM, Uwe Ligges > >> <lig...@statistik.tu-dortmund.de> wrote: > >>> > >>> Dear all, > >>> > >>> from "Writing R Extensions": > >>> > >>> The string ‘Unlimited’, meaning that there are no restrictions on > >>> distribution or use other than those imposed by relevant laws > (including > >>> copyright laws). > >>> > >>> If a package license restricts a base license (where permitted, e.g., > >>> using > >>> GPL-3 or AGPL-3 with an attribution clause), the additional terms > should > >>> be > >>> placed in file LICENSE (or LICENCE), and the string ‘+ file LICENSE’ > (or > >>> ‘+ > >>> file LICENCE’, respectively) should be appended to the > >>> corresponding individual license specification. > >>> ... > >>> Please note in particular that “Public domain” is not a valid license, > >>> since > >>> it is not recognized in some jurisdictions." > >>> > >>> So perhaps you aim for > >>> License: Unlimited > >>> > >>> Best, > >>> Uwe Ligges > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> On 14.01.2017 07:53, Deepayan Sarkar wrote: > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 5:49 AM, Duncan Murdoch > >>>> <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> On 13/01/2017 3:21 PM, Charles Geyer wrote: > >>>>>> > >>>>>> > >>>>>> > >>>>>> I would like the unlicense (http://unlicense.org/) added to R > >>>>>> licenses. Does anyone else think that worthwhile? > >>>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> That's a question for you to answer, not to ask. Who besides you > >>>>> thinks > >>>>> that it's a good license for open source software? > >>>>> > >>>>> If it is recognized by the OSF or FSF or some other authority as a > FOSS > >>>>> license, then CRAN would probably also recognize it. If not, then > CRAN > >>>>> doesn't have the resources to evaluate it and so is unlikely to > >>>>> recognize > >>>>> it. > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> Unlicense is listed in https://spdx.org/licenses/ > >>>> > >>>> Debian does include software "licensed" like this, and seems to think > >>>> this is one way (not the only one) of declaring something to be > >>>> "public domain". The first two examples I found: > >>>> > >>>> https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/r/rasqal/copyright-0.9.29-1 > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/w/wiredtiger/ > copyright-2.6.1%2Bds-1 > >>>> > >>>> This follows the format explained in > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright- > format/1.0/#license-specification, > >>>> which does not explicitly include Unlicense, but does include CC0, > >>>> which AFAICT is meant to formally license something so that it is > >>>> equivalent to being in the public domain. R does include CC0 as a > >>>> shorthand (e.g., geoknife). > >>>> > >>>> https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ says that > >>>> > >>>> <quote> > >>>> > >>>> Licenses currently found in Debian main include: > >>>> > >>>> - ... > >>>> - ... > >>>> - public domain (not a license, strictly speaking) > >>>> > >>>> </quote> > >>>> > >>>> The equivalent for CRAN would probably be something like "License: > >>>> public-domain + file LICENSE". > >>>> > >>>> -Deepayan > >>>> > >>>>> Duncan Murdoch > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> ______________________________________________ > >>>>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > >>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> ______________________________________________ > >>>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > >>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > >>>> > >>> > >>> ______________________________________________ > >>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel