Need to declare a licence for use/distribution of the code

[gavinsimpson]

R CMD check warns about an unstated licence as one is not specified in DESCRIPTION. Also we need to explicitly state what licence the code base is under via an explicit LICENCE file in the top level.

To do:

• [x] Add Licence: field to DESCRIPTION
• [x] Add a LICENCE file to the top level
• [x] Add the created ./LICENCE to .Rbuildignore

[sckott]

Yep, I think MIT for license

huh, i wasn't aware that we should add LICENSE to .Rbuildignore - I don't think check complains about that does it?

[gavinsimpson]

@sckott I thought it did if it was in the top level of the sources as R expects arbitrary files to be in inst/.

[sckott]

ah, sounds good

[sckott]

@gavinsimpson hmm, check throws an error about path to license https://travis-ci.org/ropensci/pangaear/builds/34618941#L685 - how to avoid this when LICENSE file is in inst/ - this error doesn't happen I don't think when the file is in root dir.

[gavinsimpson]

Ahh, my bad @sckott; seems i either misremembered this or things have changed somewhat since I last had to do this. Writing R Extensions states that LICENCE should be in the top level directory of the sorces, not inst/LICENCE as we discussed. However, it also talks about having LICENCE in both the top level "source" and "installation" directories. The only way to achieve the latter is via inst/LICENCE. So I wonder if we shouldn't put the full MIT licence in pangaear/LICENCE and the short two-line version in inst/LICENCE? That way people on Github see clearly what the licence is without needing to know the R ships with generic copies.

I'll have to look at the other commits to see if we need to undo or modify things to make this change.

[sckott]

Okay, thanks @gavinsimpson