[R] declaring GPL license

[Marc Schwartz]

On Oct 14, 2010, at 10:06 AM, Stacey Wood wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I'm currently writing an R package and want to declare a GPL2 license.
> According to the license agreement, I'm supposed to display:
> 
>  "This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
>   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
>   the Free Software Foundation ... See the
>   GNU General Public License for more details."
> 
> When I add this statement to the description file, the package cannot be
> processed.  Where should I add this statement to appropriately cite the
> license?
> 
> Thanks,
> Stacey


Stacey,

Read the Package Structure section of the "Writing R Extensions" manual:

  http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#Package-structure

where you can see an example of the DESCRIPTION file, including the "License" field.

If you want (and you should), create and include a file called "COPYING" in the 'inst' folder in the package, so that it gets copied to the main package directory upon installation. The content for that file (the GPL 2 license) is at:

  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt

HTH,

Marc Schwartz