I am writing a package for a company for its internal use only. What is an appropriate license statement for the DESCRIPTION file? I would like a statement which reflects the private and proprietary nature of the package, giving copyright to the writer and the company. I also don't want to violate the licensing of R and the packages I am using (RODBC, ggplot2, zoo). David Scott -- _________________________________________________________________ David Scott Department of Statistics The University of Auckland, PB 92019 Auckland 1142, NEW ZEALAND Phone: +64 9 923 5055, or +64 9 373 7599 ext 85055 Email: d.scott at auckland.ac.nz, Fax: +64 9 373 7018 Director of Consulting, Department of Statistics
On 22/12/2010 5:35 PM, David Scott wrote:> I am writing a package for a company for its internal use only. > > What is an appropriate license statement for the DESCRIPTION file?I think "Internal use only, not for distribution" is reasonable. The copyright statement is separate from the license; you can list that somewhere else.> > I would like a statement which reflects the private and proprietary > nature of the package, giving copyright to the writer and the company. I > also don't want to violate the licensing of R and the packages I am > using (RODBC, ggplot2, zoo).I don't know the license terms of those packages, but the license of R lets you use it with your own private code with very few restrictions. The restrictions come if you choose to make copies or modifications of R and give or sell them to people. So if you are giving this company your own package, we don't care how you license it to them. If you are putting together an installer that includes both R and the package, then I would say you must license the package under the GPL, and make the source code available to the company you're giving it to. You needn't distribute it to anyone else, but you can't stop the company from doing so. So if it is private because you don't want it released but the company might want to redistribute it, then don't package it with R. If it is private because the company doesn't want it released, then license it in whatever way you and they agree is reasonable. But don't trust what I write as legal advice. Duncan Murdoch
Heh. That's annoying. The R Mailing List should really set the "reply-to" header. I wrote two e-mail, so here they are: There's a 'source' command in R, so I should not use that word. If you're not copying out chunks of code and inserting them, you own the code itself. No one can somehow take that away from you, unless they paid you to write it and your contract does not say that you own it. The big issue is "bundling." ie, creating a .tgz with all of the R packages AND your stuff (source code OR binary), IF your licenses are incompatible AND you intend to distribute your new "package"--that is, distribution external from whichever entity claims ownership. Scott Which was a correction to: The issue is the bundling of the code, contained inside those packages. As long as you're not sourcing material from inside them, license it how you want. If you want, your license should be stamped at the top of your source files with something like: # [COMPANY] CONFIDENTIAL. DISTRIBUTION OF THIS SOURCE CODE IS PROHIBITED. [HR POLICY] Scott Scott^3 On Dec 22, 2010, at 2:35 PM, David Scott wrote:> I am writing a package for a company for its internal use only. > > What is an appropriate license statement for the DESCRIPTION file? > > I would like a statement which reflects the private and proprietary nature of the package, giving copyright to the writer and the company. I also don't want to violate the licensing of R and the packages I am using (RODBC, ggplot2, zoo). > > David Scott > > -- > _________________________________________________________________ > David Scott Department of Statistics > The University of Auckland, PB 92019 > Auckland 1142, NEW ZEALAND > Phone: +64 9 923 5055, or +64 9 373 7599 ext 85055 > Email: d.scott at auckland.ac.nz, Fax: +64 9 373 7018 > > Director of Consulting, Department of Statistics > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel