[Rd] Non-GPL packages for R

Simon Urbanek simon.urbanek at r-project.org
Fri Sep 11 20:39:13 CEST 2009


John,

On Sep 11, 2009, at 9:07 , Prof. John C Nash wrote:

> The responses to my posting yesterday seem to indicate more  
> consensus than I expected:
> 1) CRAN should be restricted to GPL-equivalent licensed packages

I would definitely vote against that - I think this is not what the  
most people here agreed with (and the subject [non-GPL] and your  
wording [non-redistributable code] are two entirely different things).  
GPL is more restrictive than most open source licenses so with the  
above you'd throw out a lot of "real" open source packages (namely  
those with more permissive open source licenses). The point was open  
distribution as Peter pointed out so GPL-compatible licenses would be  
one possibility (although it also disallows some open source licenses).

Cheers,
Simon


> 2) r-forge could be left "buyer beware" using DESCRIPTION information
> 3) We may want a specific repository for restricted packages (RANC?)
>
> How to proceed? A short search on Rseek did not turn up a chain of  
> command for CRAN.
>
> I'm prepared to help out with documentation etc. to move changes  
> forward. They are not, in my opinion, likely to cause a lot of  
> trouble for most users, and should simplify things over time.
>
> JN
>
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