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I am reading about licenses. What kind of license is the best license for an R package?
I do like Creative Commons a lot but it is not recommended for software. Their own website says "We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software." (source: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software)
I wonder if giving my R package a CC 4.0 license is against R good practises. I did not find information about this specific topic.
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We recommend one of two Creative Commons licenses: If you want to make the data as freely available as possible, you use the CC0 license with use_cc0_license() . This is a permissive license that's equivalent to the MIT license (but applies to data, not code).
It is the opinion of the R Core Team that one can use R for commercial purposes (e.g., in business or in consulting). The GPL , like all Open Source licenses, permits all and any use of the package. It only restricts distribution of R or of other programs containing code from R.
As long as what you're selling doesn't include source code that's covered under another license, or any binaries made from that source code, you're in the clear for copyright. Unless you copy-pasted and modified somebody else's code, you hold the copyright for whatever you've written.
R packages contain code, data, and documentation in a standardised collection format that can be installed by users of R, typically via a centralised software repository such as CRAN (the Comprehensive R Archive Network).
GNU GPL (preferably v3) is the standard choice for "fairness". This enforces anyone else who wants to modify or redistribute your code to also provide the source code.
The MIT (a.k.a. Expat or X11), modified and simplified BSD, and Apache 2.0 licenses allow more freedom for people wanting to use your code in a commercial context.
If you don't really care what people do with your code, set "License: Unlimited" in the DESCRIPTION file.
Further info: Pick a license, any license
Here's part of a document from a company that I worked at that created commercial software. Software provided under any of the licences marked "Allowed" were OK to be included in commercial software. Software under "Restricted Use" licenses could be used for analyses and other internal use, but not included in the commercial software. Software under any other license was forbidden for use.
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