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
