Bioconductor package licenses

Published

May 21, 2026

Get Bioc package list

suppressPackageStartupMessages({
    library(BiocPkgTools)
    library(dplyr)
    library(DT)
})

BiocManager::version()
[1] '3.24'
pkg <- biocPkgList(repo = "BioCsoft")
'getOption("repos")' replaces Bioconductor standard repositories, see 'help("repositories", package = "BiocManager")'
for details.
Replacement repositories:
    CRAN: https://p3m.dev/cran/__linux__/noble/latest
adding rname 'https://bioconductor.org/packages/3.24/bioc/VIEWS'
# pkg <- biocPkgList(repo = c("BioCsoft", "BioCann", "BioCexp", "BioCworkflows"))

Get licenses

sort(table(pkg$License, useNA = "ifany"))

                                           AGPL (>= 3)                                  AGPL-3 | file LICENSE 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                Apache License (== 2.0) + file LICENSE                 Apache License (== 2.0) | file LICENSE 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                               Apache License (>= 2.0)                      Apache License 2.0 | file LICENSE 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                          Artistic 2.0                    Artistic-2.0 | GPL-2 + file LICENSE 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                          BSD_3_clause                            CC BY-SA 4.0 + file LICENSE 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                                   CPL Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                          EPL (>= 1.0)                   GNU General Public License version 3 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                             GPL (==2)                                           GPL (>= 2.1) 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                            GPL (>=2 )                                                  GPL 3 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                         GPL version 3                                GPL-2 | GPL-3 | BSL-1.0 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                  GPL-3 + file LICENCE                                 GPL-3 bioconductor.org 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                             GPL(>= 2)                                               GPL(>=3) 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                          LGPL (>= 2.1) | file LICENSE                                          LGPL (>= 3.0) 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                              LGPL-2.1                                     MIT | file LICENSE 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                           MIT License                             Mozilla Public License 2.0 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                             Unlimited                                                   <NA> 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                               Apache License (== 2.0)                                           Artistic-1.0 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                           Artistic-2.0 + file LICENSE                    BSD 3-clause License + file LICENSE 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                                             CC BY 4.0                                        CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                        CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 + file LICENSE                                                    CC0 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                                                   EPL                                           GPL (>= 3.0) 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                                           GPL (>=2.0)                                            GPL (>=3.0) 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                                              GPL (>2)             GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                                         GPL version 2                                 GPL Version 2 or later 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                                         LGPL (>= 2.1)                                             LGPL (>=3) 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                               LGPL-2.1 | file LICENSE                                  LGPL-3 + file LICENSE 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                                                CeCILL                                  CeCILL | file LICENSE 
                                                     3                                                      3 
                                          GPL (>= 2.0)                              GPL (>= 2) + file LICENSE 
                                                     3                                                      3 
                              GPL (>=3) + file LICENSE                                  AGPL-3 + file LICENSE 
                                                     3                                                      4 
                                    Apache License 2.0                                   Artistic License 2.0 
                                                     4                                                      4 
                                  GPL-2 + file LICENSE                                   GPL-2 | file LICENSE 
                                                     4                                                      4 
                                            LGPL (>=2)                                     MIT + file LICENCE 
                                                     4                                                      4 
                                         AGPL-3.0-only                              GPL (>= 3) + file LICENSE 
                                                     5                                                      5 
                                              GPL(>=2)                                                 LGPL-2 
                                                     5                                                      5 
                                 Apache License (>= 2)                                          GPL-2 | GPL-3 
                                                     6                                                      6 
                                                   MIT                            BSD_2_clause + file LICENSE 
                                                     6                                                      8 
                                         LGPL (>= 2.0)                                            LGPL (>= 3) 
                                                     8                                                      8 
                                             GPL (>=3)                            Artistic-2.0 | file LICENSE 
                                                     9                                                     13 
                                  GPL-3 | file LICENSE                                                 AGPL-3 
                                                    13                                                     16 
                           BSD_3_clause + file LICENSE                                            LGPL (>= 2) 
                                                    17                                                     18 
                                                   GPL                                                 LGPL-3 
                                                    21                                                     36 
                                          file LICENSE                                                   LGPL 
                                                    38                                                     38 
                                             GPL (>=2)                                   GPL-3 + file LICENSE 
                                                    47                                                     66 
                                            GPL (>= 3)                                             GPL (>= 2) 
                                                    77                                                    177 
                                                 GPL-2                                     MIT + file LICENSE 
                                                   223                                                    378 
                                                 GPL-3                                           Artistic-2.0 
                                                   485                                                    529 

Clean up

## Get unique licenses
lic <- unique(pkg$License)
lic <- lic[!is.na(lic)]
alres <- lapply(structure(lic, names = lic), tools:::analyze_license)

## Get information about the licenses
alres <- do.call(dplyr::bind_rows, lapply(names(alres), function(nm) {
    a <- alres[[nm]]
    data.frame(License = nm,
               LicenseStandardizable = a$is_standardizable,
               LicenseVerified = a$is_verified,
               LicenseStandardization = a$standardization,
               LicenseCanonical = a$is_canonical,
               LicenseFOSS = a$is_FOSS,
               LicenseRestrictsUse = a$restricts_use)
}))

## Add additional column removing the "+/| file LICENSE" part (if we want to 
## assume that this is compatible with the main license indication)
alres$LicenseStandardizationShort <- gsub("[ ]*\\+*\\|*[ ]*file LICEN[SC]E",
                                          "", alres$LicenseStandardization)

dim(alres)
[1] 91  8
length(unique(alres$LicenseStandardizationShort))
[1] 50
DT::datatable(alres,
              extensions = "FixedColumns",
              rownames = FALSE,
              options = list(scrollX = TRUE, 
                             fixedColumns = list(leftColumns = 1),
                             search = list(regex = FALSE, caseInsensitive = TRUE),
                             pageLength = 20))
## Add license columns to pkg list
pkg <- pkg %>% 
    dplyr::select(Package, Maintainer, License, hasLICENSE) %>%
    dplyr::left_join(alres, by = "License")
dim(pkg)
[1] 2378   11
DT::datatable(pkg,
              extensions = "FixedColumns",
              rownames = FALSE,
              options = list(scrollX = TRUE, 
                             fixedColumns = list(leftColumns = 1),
                             search = list(regex = FALSE, caseInsensitive = TRUE),
                             pageLength = 20))

Tabulate licenses

sort(table(pkg$LicenseStandardizationShort, useNA = "ifany"))

                                           AGPL (>= 3)                                Apache License (>= 2.0) 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                  Artistic-2.0 | GPL-2                                           CC BY-SA 4.0 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                                   CPL Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                          EPL (>= 1.0)                   GNU General Public License version 3 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                            GPL (== 2)                                           GPL (>= 2.1) 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                               GPL-2 | GPL-3 | BSL-1.0                                          LGPL (>= 3.0) 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                           MIT License                             Mozilla Public License 2.0 
                                                     1                                                      1 
                                             Unlimited                                           Artistic-1.0 
                                                     1                                                      2 
                                  BSD 3-clause License                                              CC BY 4.0 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                                                   CC0                                                    EPL 
                                                     2                                                      2 
                                             GPL (> 2)                                          LGPL (>= 2.1) 
                                                     2                                                      3 
                                              LGPL-2.1                                Apache License (== 2.0) 
                                                     3                                                      4 
                                  Artistic License 2.0                                        CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 
                                                     4                                                      4 
                                          GPL (>= 3.0)                                     Apache License 2.0 
                                                     4                                                      5 
                                          GPL (>= 2.0)                                                 LGPL-2 
                                                     5                                                      5 
                                 Apache License (>= 2)                                                 CeCILL 
                                                     6                                                      6 
                                         GPL-2 | GPL-3                                           BSD_2_clause 
                                                     6                                                      8 
                                         LGPL (>= 2.0)                                                   <NA> 
                                                     8                                                      9 
                                           LGPL (>= 3)                                           BSD_3_clause 
                                                    10                                                     18 
                                                AGPL-3                                                    GPL 
                                                    21                                                     21 
                                           LGPL (>= 2)                                                        
                                                    22                                                     38 
                                                  LGPL                                                 LGPL-3 
                                                    38                                                     38 
                                            GPL (>= 3)                                                  GPL-2 
                                                    95                                                    233 
                                            GPL (>= 2)                                                    MIT 
                                                   236                                                    389 
                                          Artistic-2.0                                                  GPL-3 
                                                   545                                                    567 

Some cases that may need attention

We attempt to estimate the fraction of packages that are provided under an OSI approved license. It should be noted that, automatically performed, this will necessary be a rough estimate, e.g. since there are several packages that do not mention the license explicitly in the DESCRIPTION file but only provide the license text in a separate LICENSE file.

totalNbrPkg <- nrow(pkg)
ccLicensed <- pkg$Package[grep("CC|Creative Commons", pkg$LicenseStandardizationShort)]
fileLicense <- pkg$Package[which(pkg$LicenseStandardizationShort == "")]
licUnlimited <- pkg$Package[which(pkg$LicenseStandardizationShort == "Unlimited")]
licNotStandardizable <- pkg$Package[is.na(pkg$LicenseStandardizationShort)]

fractionOSIApproved <- 1 - length(unique(c(ccLicensed, fileLicense, 
                                           licUnlimited, licNotStandardizable)))/totalNbrPkg
print(paste0("Rough estimate of fraction packages with OSI approved license: ", 
             signif(100 * fractionOSIApproved, digits = 4), "%"))
[1] "Rough estimate of fraction packages with OSI approved license: 97.56%"

Creative Commons licenses

Creative Commons recommends not using their licenses for software (but may be suitable for data packages): https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software. Note though that the CC licenses are among the ‘standard’ open source licenses listed in the R license database: https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/share/licenses/license.db.

DT::datatable(subset(pkg, grepl("CC|Creative Commons", LicenseStandardizationShort)),
              extensions = "FixedColumns",
              rownames = FALSE,
              options = list(scrollX = TRUE, 
                             fixedColumns = list(leftColumns = 1),
                             search = list(regex = FALSE, caseInsensitive = TRUE),
                             pageLength = 20))

Packages that have just a ‘file LICENSE’

These need to be checked manually.

.makeLinkToLicense <- function(pkg, text) {
    sprintf('<a href="%s" target="_blank"> %s</a>',
            paste0("https://bioconductor.org/packages/devel/bioc/licenses/", 
                   pkg, "/LICENSE"), 
            text)
}
DT::datatable(subset(pkg, LicenseStandardizationShort == "") %>% 
                  dplyr::mutate(License = vapply(seq_along(License), function(i) {
                      .makeLinkToLicense(Package[i], License[i])
                  }, "NA")),
              extensions = "FixedColumns",
              rownames = FALSE,
              escape = FALSE,
              options = list(scrollX = TRUE, 
                             fixedColumns = list(leftColumns = 1),
                             search = list(regex = FALSE, caseInsensitive = TRUE),
                             pageLength = 20))

Packages that have license “Unlimited”

DT::datatable(subset(pkg, LicenseStandardizationShort == "Unlimited"),
              extensions = "FixedColumns",
              rownames = FALSE,
              options = list(scrollX = TRUE, 
                             fixedColumns = list(leftColumns = 1),
                             search = list(regex = FALSE, caseInsensitive = TRUE),
                             pageLength = 20))

Packages that have licenses that can not be standardized

Some of these may be false positives.

DT::datatable(subset(pkg, is.na(LicenseStandardizationShort)),
              extensions = "FixedColumns",
              rownames = FALSE,
              options = list(scrollX = TRUE, 
                             fixedColumns = list(leftColumns = 1),
                             search = list(regex = FALSE, caseInsensitive = TRUE),
                             pageLength = 20))

The rest of the licenses appear to be approved open source licenses (https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical).

Session info

sessionInfo()
R version 4.6.0 (2026-04-24)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Running under: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libblas.so.3 
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libopenblasp-r0.3.26.so;  LAPACK version 3.12.0

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C               LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8    
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8    LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

time zone: Etc/UTC
tzcode source: system (glibc)

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] DT_0.34.0           dplyr_1.2.1         BiocPkgTools_1.31.6 htmlwidgets_1.6.4  

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] xfun_0.57           bslib_0.11.0        httr2_1.2.2         gh_1.5.0            Biobase_2.73.1     
 [6] tzdb_0.5.0          vctrs_0.7.3         tools_4.6.0         crosstalk_1.2.2     bitops_1.0-9       
[11] generics_0.1.4      stats4_4.6.0        curl_7.1.0          RUnit_0.4.33.1      tibble_3.3.1       
[16] RSQLite_3.52.0      blob_1.3.0          pkgconfig_2.0.3     dbplyr_2.5.2        graph_1.91.0       
[21] lifecycle_1.0.5     compiler_4.6.0      stringr_1.6.0       biocViews_1.81.0    htmltools_0.5.9    
[26] sass_0.4.10         RCurl_1.98-1.18     yaml_2.3.12         pillar_1.11.1       jquerylib_0.1.4    
[31] tidyr_1.3.2         cachem_1.1.0        tidyselect_1.2.1    rvest_1.0.5         digest_0.6.39      
[36] stringi_1.8.7       purrr_1.2.2         fastmap_1.2.0       cli_3.6.6           magrittr_2.0.5     
[41] RBGL_1.89.0         XML_3.99-0.23       readr_2.2.0         withr_3.0.2         filelock_1.0.3     
[46] rappdirs_0.3.4      bit64_4.8.2         lubridate_1.9.5     timechange_0.4.0    rmarkdown_2.31     
[51] httr_1.4.8          igraph_2.3.1        bit_4.6.0           otel_0.2.0          hms_1.1.4          
[56] memoise_2.0.1       evaluate_1.0.5      knitr_1.51          BiocFileCache_3.3.0 rlang_1.2.0        
[61] glue_1.8.1          DBI_1.3.0           BiocManager_1.30.27 xml2_1.5.2          BiocGenerics_0.59.2
[66] jsonlite_2.0.0      R6_2.6.1