On 11/27/2013 11:51 AM, Thomas Kluyver wrote: > Can I suggest that we bring the discussion back to rpy2? People have been > arguing about the abstract merits of different licenses for decades, and > we're not going to resolve that debate here. > > R is GPL licensed, while most of the Python ecosystem in which people use > rpy2 uses BSD style licenses. I'd argue that it doesn't make sense for rpy2 > to use a less permissive license (AGPL) than either of the things it > connects. AGPL was also designed for things running as web services, and > while rpy2 can be used on a website, it's not the typical way to use it. > > There's a question over whether the GPL license applied to R requires rpy2 > to be GPL licensed as well. In my opinion, the intent of the GPL does cover > rpy2, whether or not the letter of it does. The FSF reckons that dynamic > linking is enough to create a 'combined work': > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic > > However, by my reading, that does not prevent the rpy2 source code (apart > from any parts which are derived from R's code) being dual licensed with a > more permissive license, such as BSD or LGPL. This would make it easier to > share code with other scientific Python projects. For instance, rpy2 has > recently adopted rmagic from IPython, which is BSD licensed, but as it > stands, any code we wanted to move the other way would need to be > explicitly relicensed, with agreement from every contributor. > > Best wishes, > Thomas
I do participate is several projects that have recently debated changing their license to BSD or MIT from LGPL or GPL. The idea primarily being that private businesses would be more interested in contributing, not more academics. Simply out of removing the fear of GPL taint on some product a company may produce. Academics theoretically are obliged (philosophically) to release how they did stuff anyways if they publish (yes I'm aware historically many universities have hoarded such things for monetary gain). Seeing many of the likely users of Rpy being private science (bioinformatics) and banking (a big user of R), maybe a middle ground could facilitate more participation. You are correct, the license applies at distribution. If we are neither distributing R nor Python then it's somewhat gray if the GPL is required. LGPL is probably the most pragmatic bridge here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-licensing#License_compatibility So LGPL/GPL dual could work. And of course if you're talking LGPL, some people like the MPL more which is quite similar on many points. FYI, if changes are required to rmagic from the rpy2 side, just contribute it directly to rmagic and pull a new copy back to rpy2 no license change required. Thanks, Alex ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, & PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349351&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ rpy-list mailing list rpy-list@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rpy-list
