FOSS to non-FOSS licence change CRAN package [closed]

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I recently decided to commercialize parts of my code in a package I had written for R, after submitting two versions under the LGPL licence to CRAN. On the third update, I changed the licensing from LGPL to CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 to accommodate for this.

However, after submission, I received a message from the guys at CRAN stating that it is not possible to change a free and open source (FOSS) licence to a non-FOSS. After suggesting two alternatives:

1. Remove all previous versions of the package which had an LGPL licence OR
2. Change licensing for previous versions to the non-FOSS licence

Both were rejected with the following message:

we cannot remove archived versions with a FOSS license, and we do not accept changes to a non-FOSS license for commercialization reasons.

Could someone shed some more light on why this is not possible on this and any alternatives I could take, if any?

Thanks in advanced!

Answer 1

You cannot retroactively change your license for already published code. Previous releases remain available forever -- that is part of the "contract" between the "publisher" of code (here, you) and its users.

You are of course free to re-license new versions.

And CRAN is equally free to refuse to distribute commercial code. Because if you look more carefully, you will note that the 4600+ packages on CRAN are all Open Source and not commercial.

Answer 2

Read the CRAN Repository Policy. You gave them the right to distribute the packages in perpetuity via your choice to license them as LGPL. You cannot retroactively change a legal agreement. Even if CRAN removed the LGPL versions of your package, anyone could re-publish that source code because you gave every user the right to distribute the source code. This is the entire point of FOSS.

Your only alternative is: re-license your package as commercial and release/distribute it yourself.