I'm looking for guidance or advice about the R license to use in preparing a package containing the Baseball Database from http://baseball1.com/statistics/ My main purpose is to make it available to students in a course, and to develop it with others I'd like to put it on R-Forge, and then perhaps make it public on CRAN. However, the page above bears a very restrictive copyright notice and limited license: This database is copyright 1996-2010 by Sean Lahman. A license is granted for individual use for research purposes. It may not be re-distributed without permission. Any commercial use, or other dissemination of the database in part or in whole is prohibited. Use of this database constitutes acceptance of these terms. I've written several times to the author asking permission for my intended wider use, but have received no reply. What makes this perplexing is that I am apparently free to "distribute" this by sending links in an email or posting them on a web page, so that others actually download them for personal use. The R package, however would be considered a "derived work", I think, since it contains .RData files I created and .Rd documentation. Does the original limited license apply to this? AFAICS, none of the R licenses described at: http://www.r-project.org/Licenses/ seem to cover this situation, although they seem to apply to the R package, not the data on which it is based. The TeX archive CTAN defines a wider range of licenses, including a bunch of non-free ones, http://ctan.mirror.rafal.ca/help/Catalogue/licenses.html But I don't know if any of these are acceptable in R packages (e.g., will pass R CMD check). I'd rather not have to consult a lawyer, so any guidance is welcome. -- Michael Friendly Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca Professor, Psychology Dept. York University Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814 4700 Keele Street Web: http://www.datavis.ca Toronto, ONT M3J 1P3 CANADA
On Sep 16, 2011, at 10:32 AM, Michael Friendly wrote:> I'm looking for guidance or advice about the R license to use in preparing a package containing the > Baseball Database from http://baseball1.com/statistics/ > My main purpose is to make it available to students in a course, and to develop it with others > I'd like to put it on R-Forge, and then perhaps make it public on CRAN. > > However, the page above bears a very restrictive copyright notice and limited license: > > This database is copyright 1996-2010 by Sean Lahman. A license is granted > for individual use for research purposes. It may not be re-distributed > without permission. Any commercial use, or other dissemination of the > database in part or in whole is prohibited. Use of this database > constitutes acceptance of these terms. > > I've written several times to the author asking permission for my intended wider use, but have > received no reply. > > What makes this perplexing is that I am apparently free to "distribute" this by sending links > in an email or posting them on a web page, so that others actually download them for > personal use. The R package, however would be considered a "derived work", I think, > since it contains .RData files I created and .Rd documentation. Does the original > limited license apply to this? >The way people have dealt with this in the past is to create a package that displays the license and downloads the data. The way I read it (but I am not a lawyer and the wording is very ambiguous) you cannot redistribute it in any form (not even in original form) so the only way to obtain it is to download in from the site. This also implies that the conversion to .RData has to be done at (or after) install time from the download and can't be done at build time. This does not constitute a legal advice, it is just my personal opinion. Cheers, Simon> AFAICS, none of the R licenses described at: http://www.r-project.org/Licenses/ > seem to cover this situation, although they seem to apply to the R package, not the > data on which it is based. > > The TeX archive CTAN defines a wider range of licenses, including a bunch of non-free ones, > http://ctan.mirror.rafal.ca/help/Catalogue/licenses.html > > But I don't know if any of these are acceptable in R packages (e.g., will pass R CMD check). > I'd rather not have to consult a lawyer, so any guidance is welcome. > > -- > Michael Friendly Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca > Professor, Psychology Dept. > York University Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814 > 4700 Keele Street Web: http://www.datavis.ca > Toronto, ONT M3J 1P3 CANADA > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > >
Michael You might look at my TSzip package on CRAN. There are examples in the Guide: http://cran.at.r-project.org/web/packages/TSzip/vignettes/Guide.pdf. The package may not work directly, since it is designed for time series data (the example is daily market data.) But the general idea of just getting the data directly from their web site rather than re-distributing it should work with simple modifications. (If it is time series data you need for your course, there are also examples of other data sets in the guides for TSxls, TSgetSymbol, and TShistQuote.) HTH, Paul> -----Original Message----- > From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r- > project.org] On Behalf Of Michael Friendly > Sent: September 16, 2011 10:32 AM > To: r-devel > Subject: [Rd] R license for a derived data-only package > > I'm looking for guidance or advice about the R license to use in > preparing a package containing the > Baseball Database from http://baseball1.com/statistics/ > My main purpose is to make it available to students in a course, and to > develop it with others > I'd like to put it on R-Forge, and then perhaps make it public on CRAN. > > However, the page above bears a very restrictive copyright notice and > limited license: > > This database is copyright 1996-2010 by Sean Lahman. A license is > granted > for individual use for research purposes. It may not be re-distributed > without permission. Any commercial use, or other dissemination of the > database in part or in whole is prohibited. Use of this database > constitutes acceptance of these terms. > > I've written several times to the author asking permission for my > intended wider use, but have > received no reply. > > What makes this perplexing is that I am apparently free to "distribute" > this by sending links > in an email or posting them on a web page, so that others actually > download them for > personal use. The R package, however would be considered a "derived > work", I think, > since it contains .RData files I created and .Rd documentation. Does > the original > limited license apply to this? > > AFAICS, none of the R licenses described at: > http://www.r-project.org/Licenses/ > seem to cover this situation, although they seem to apply to the R > package, not the > data on which it is based. > > The TeX archive CTAN defines a wider range of licenses, including a > bunch of non-free ones, > http://ctan.mirror.rafal.ca/help/Catalogue/licenses.html > > But I don't know if any of these are acceptable in R packages (e.g., > will pass R CMD check). > I'd rather not have to consult a lawyer, so any guidance is welcome. > > -- > Michael Friendly Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca > Professor, Psychology Dept. > York University Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814 > 4700 Keele Street Web: http://www.datavis.ca > Toronto, ONT M3J 1P3 CANADA > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel=================================================================================== La version fran?aise suit le texte anglais. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This email may contain privileged and/or confidential information, and the Bank of Canada does not waive any related rights. Any distribution, use, or copying of this email or the information it contains by other than the intended recipient is unauthorized. If you received this email in error please delete it immediately from your system and notify the sender promptly by email that you have done so. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Le pr?sent courriel peut contenir de l'information privil?gi?e ou confidentielle. La Banque du Canada ne renonce pas aux droits qui s'y rapportent. Toute diffusion, utilisation ou copie de ce courriel ou des renseignements qu'il contient par une personne autre que le ou les destinataires d?sign?s est interdite. Si vous recevez ce courriel par erreur, veuillez le supprimer imm?diatement et envoyer sans d?lai ? l'exp?diteur un message ?lectronique pour l'aviser que vous avez ?limin? de votre ordinateur toute copie du courriel re?u.