Hi Wojciech, On Sat, 2007-04-21 at 02:16 -0400, Wojciech Gryc wrote: > Thanks for the responses! > > With regards to GPL / LGPL issues, I understand the macro code would be > under GPL, but is that okay from your end? I don't mind that license, but am > not sure how OO developers feel. :)
This is not a matter of how we feel, but a matter of licensing. :-) We can't ship a GPL'ed code with OO.o because OO.o is LGPL. So, if your component ends up released under GPL, then that will become an issue that requires a resolution. My suggestion would be to find a framework that is not GPL'ed and is released under a license that allows us to ship it. But if you still need to release your component under GPL for whatever reason, we have two options: 1) Keep your component separate from the main product (OO.o), but that's a suboptimal solution IMHO. 2) Contribute your code to the R project, and make that a part of R distribution. But then, I'd rather you contribute code to the OO.o project, :-) so this solution is still suboptimal from OO.o project's point of view. > I don't really want the work to depend on a TCP/IP > connection. Why not? :-) Given the licensing constraint we have with this task, relying on TCP/IP connection as a way to have a non-GPL software to connect to a GPL-ed software sounds pretty attractive to me. Let's recap. I have already listed two possible ways to use a GPL'ed software from a non-GPL'ed software without violating the license: 1) Load the library at run-time, using dlopen (or equivalent). This avoids the need to dynamically link your program with the R library, which would require your program to be released under GPL (not good). 2) Execute the R program inside a forked process and pass a custom script you crafted to R, then parse and interpret the output. The drawback of this approach is parsing the output could be very labor-intensive, and prone to error. Now there is a third way: 3) Modify R to accept TCP/IP connection, and write a component on OO.o side to connect to R via TCP/IP. In this scenario, your modification to R will be released under GPL with the R project, and your OO.o component will be released under LGPL. Oh, wait. I just thought of another one. :-) 4) Convince the R developers to release the R library under LGPL, then we can ship it with OO.o. The drawback of this approach is that if the R core developers are not interested, all bets are off. > > That being said, I met with Louis Suarez-Potts from OO today (he lives in > Toronto and we met through my university) and one thing he brought up was > that if a TCP/IP connection is used it could be possible to have people > separate the computers running the data analysis from those actually using > Calc. I CC'ed him here in case I missed the main point, so please feel free > to correct me! Yup. Interesting thought. Kohei --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
