I started a discussion explaining the issue here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-324
On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 5:50 PM, Wes McKinney <wesmck...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks for weighing in on this, Hadley. > > To your point > >> You can distribute the package code according to its >> license, but whenever you bundle it with R (i.e. to actually use it) >> the GPL will apply to the whole conglomerate. > > If someone wanted to create an all-GPLv2 software distribution > containing R and a bunch of libraries, then including the R Arrow > library would be problematic as Apache 2.0 is not compatible > (https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html). I don't > think this is really a problem since R users generally just install > things from CRAN. > > My understanding is that ASF legal has taken issue when an Apache > project _cannot be used at all_ without a hard GPL dependency (outside > certain exceptions, e.g. generated build files by GPL tools). This > makes it impossible to create a self-contained software distribution > of the project whose code and all dependencies are Apache 2.0 > compatible. There was the recent BSD+Patents discussion on LEGAL where > projects were disallowed from using projects under that license as a > hard dependency. > > I will open a LEGAL issue on the JIRA to discuss, but since the R > portion of Arrow is an _optional_ part of the project, I am hopeful > this will be deemed OK. > > - Wes > > On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 5:39 PM, Hadley Wickham <h.wick...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 8:15 AM, Wes McKinney <wesmck...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> I can open a ticket to get a definitive answer to these questions. >>> >>> From http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#platform and the >>> subsequent questions there, I view the R language and build tools like >>> Rcpp as part of the "R platform", which is, for the most part, all >>> GPL. SparkR depends on R, but only has testthat (MIT) as a dependency >>> beyond the R runtime. I think it is challenging to build high quality >>> software for the R platform relying only on the main R runtime and the >>> limited third party components which happens to be released under >>> non-CategoryX licenses. >> >> Some legal advice is probably needed, but do also see this statement >> from the R Foundation about package licenses: >> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2009-May/053248.html >> >> In general, the R community has taken the opinion that it is ok to >> license code that links to R with non-GPL (but GPL-compatible) >> licenses. You can distribute the package code according to its >> license, but whenever you bundle it with R (i.e. to actually use it) >> the GPL will apply to the whole conglomerate. >> >> So including an R arrow package would be fine according to the general >> standards of the R community. The Apache legal counsel may of course >> disagree. >> >> Hadley >> >> -- >> http://hadley.nz
