On Sep 18, 2014, at 3:42 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/09/2014 2:35 PM, Marc Schwartz wrote: >> On Sep 18, 2014, at 4:36 AM, Pasu <pasupat...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> > Hi >> > >> > I would like to know how to use R in our commercial business application >> > which we plan to host in cloud or deploy on customer's premise. >> > >> > 1. Using R and its package, does it enforce that my commercial business >> > application should be distributed under GPL, as the statistical derivation >> > (output) by using R will be presented to the end users as part of of our >> > commercial business application >> > 2. Whom to contact to get commercial license if required for using R? >> > >> > Rgds >> > Pasupathy >> >> >> You will not get a definitive legal opinion here and my comments below do >> not represent any formal opinion on the part of any organization. >> >> There is nothing preventing you or your company from using R as an end user. >> There are many of us who use R in commercial settings and in general, the >> output of a GPL'd application (text or binary) is not considered to be also >> GPL'd. >> >> The subtleties get into the distribution of R (which you seem to plan to >> do), the nature of any additional functionality/code that you or your >> company may write/distribute, how that code interacts with R and/or modifies >> R source code copyrighted by the R Foundation and others. If you distribute >> R to clients, you will need to make R's source code available to them in >> some manner along with any modifications to that same code, while preserving >> appropriate copyrights. >> >> A proprietary (closed source) application cannot be licensed under the GPL, >> but your company's application/code may be forced to be GPL (the so called >> viral aspect of the GPL) depending upon how your application is implemented >> as I noted in the prior paragraph. Thus, you may be forced to make your >> source code available to your clients as well. >> >> If you plan to move forward, you should consult with an attorney well >> educated in software licensing and distribution issues, especially as they >> pertain to the GPL. The risks are not inconsequential of falling on the >> wrong side of the GPL. >> >> The official R distribution is not available via a commercial or developer >> license, but there are commercial vendors of R and a Google search will >> point you in their direction, if desired. However, since their products are >> founded upon the official R distribution and the GPL, they will have similar >> issues with respect to any enhancements that they have created and >> therefore, your concerns do not necessarily go away. They will have also >> consulted legal counsel on these issues because the viability of their >> business depends upon it. > > I agree with all of that but for one thing: not all distributions are built > on the GPL'd original. I believe Tibco is selling an independent > implementation. > > Duncan Murdoch Thanks Duncan, I stand corrected. A quick Google search supports the point that the Tibco "TERR" system is an independent, closed-source, "re-implementation" of R, not based upon GPL R. Regards, Marc ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
