Fix/license for cran

[jefferis]

I'm not certain that this is the right incantation but taking a bit of inspiration from e.g.

http://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/optparse/COPYRIGHTS

I can offer this small patch to get things rolling again.

[hadley]

Can you also list Activestate in authors?

[jefferis]

Like so?

person("ActiveState", role="aut"),

[hadley]

I think you want role = "cph"

[trevorld]

Listing ActiveState in DESCRIPTION under role = "cph" is good for
keeping CRAN happy.

As Gregory points out the "Copyrights" field in DESCRIPTION is a good place
for preserving
all the short copyright notices like the ActiveState copyright notice which
under the MIT license must be preserved somewhere or
you could probably change file LICENSE to something like:

YEAR: 2010, 2014
COPYRIGHT HOLDER: ActiveState, Hadley Wickham, RStudio

which probably fulfills the spirit of the MIT requirement to "preserve
copyright notice" without requiring a separate "Copyrights" field or
COPYRIGHTS file (the COPYRIGHTS file is useful if combining code from a
very long permissive license with code under the GPL like I did in the
argparse/optparse packages but probably overkill when all the code is under
a single permissive license). FYI when you use a COPYRIGHTS file to in
order to fulfill the "preseve copyright notice" requirements of all your
licenses you still need duplicate a list of all the authors and copyright
holders in DESCRIPTION to satisfy CRAN.

Technically if people have been contributing code (4+ lines) to the project
under the MIT license and not explicitly assigning copyright to RStudio or
Hadley then there should probably be even more copyright holders in LICENSE
or the "Copyrights" field of DESCRIPTION although given that they are all
properly credited in DESCRIPTION and the package is released
non-commercially under such a permissive license I doubt that any of the
contributors or CRAN care strongly that this copyright information is
recorded perfectly although ActiveState is a company and maybe cares more
strongly.

Trevor

On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 9:28 AM, Hadley Wickham notifications@github.com
wrote:

In DESCRIPTION:

License: MIT + file LICENSE
+Copyright: Original python appdirs module copyright (c) 2010 ActiveState

I think you want role = "cph"

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
https://github.com/hadley/rappdirs/pull/17/files#r16550093.

[gaborcsardi]

This is not the right place to discuss, but I guess it would make sense to create a CLA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_license_agreement) for rappdirs (and other projects). Just to be safe in the future. Anyway, just bringing this up, it's up to the owner to decide, obviously.

[jefferis]

Gregory Jefferis

On 21 Aug 2014, at 18:29, trevorld notifications@github.com wrote:

In DESCRIPTION:

License: MIT + file LICENSE
+Copyright: Original python appdirs module copyright (c) 2010 ActiveState
Listing ActiveState in DESCRIPTION under role = "cph" is good for keeping CRAN happy. As Gregory points out the "Copyrights" field in DESCRIPTION is a good place for preserving all the short copyright notices like the ActiveState copyright notice which under the MIT license must be preserved somewhere or you could probably change file LICENSE to something like: YEAR: 2010, 2014 COPYRIGHT HOLDER: ActiveState, Hadley Wickham, RStudio which probably fulfills the spirit of the MIT

So is the consensus that it would be better simply to squash the license file back down to two lines as above? The copyright field in description would still give a bit more info.

Technically if people have been contributing code (4+ lines) to the project under the MIT license and not explicitly assigning copyright

FWIW I hereby assign copyright of my portions of this code to Hadley Wickham, RStudio.

[hadley]

I think I preferred the explicitness of the original license file. @jefferis can you please restore?

@gaborcsardi maybe, but I think a CLA just adds more hassle.

[jefferis]

@hadley, did you want me to reset this branch to 96a10af? This probably makes more sense than reverting, which I did hurriedly on Thu last.

[hadley]

Whatever is easiest for you

[jefferis]

OK, I reset to give you a clean branch at 96a10af with a detailed LICENSE file with 2 entries. Best, Greg.

[hadley]

Resubmitted. Fingers crossed.

[jefferis]

@hadley I'm guessing the detailed license didn't fly ...

[hadley]

Note, apparently that needs to go in LICENSE.note (but don't actually need it here)