R help - Oct 2010 - declaring GPL license

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

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On 14 October 2010 at 11:06, 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?

I suggested you do these two steps:

  1)  In the file DESCRIPTION, set the License: field accordingly.

  2)  In the top-level directory of your sources, include the file COPYING.

That should do.

Dirk, not a lawyer and not playing one on TV either

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com

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