I understand that it is difficult to make the distinction between "linking" and "derived work". Whatever the conclusion, I always feel a little bit abused when someone wants to "sell" me R somehow (here, you have to pay 3500$/year to use R inside of Pipeline Pilot). I would accept to pay this money if I was in front of R experts that sell me their expertise, indeed. But this is not the case: they don't know much about R, and they made a really ugly and inefficient interface between PP and R that is not worth those 3500$/year.
Best, Philippe Grosjean Peter Dalgaard wrote: > Philippe Grosjean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > >>Hello all, >> >>Sorry for this email not directly related to R developement. I just come >>from a nice demonstration session from Scitegic about their Pipeline >>Pilot (PP) software, and especially their 'R collection' which brings R >>calculations into the software >>(http://www.scitegic.com/documents/RStats_Collection.pdf). >> >>I looked carefully on the way they do it: they pass data from PP to R >>using text files, they call R.exe using a R script and input - output >>files, like: >> >>R.exe --nosave --no-environ --no-resore-data < script.R > output.txt >> >>And in the script, you have: >> >>read.table(...) >> >>which imports the data just exported from PP in an CVS file by the >>component. I don't want to discuss here the ugly and extremely >>inefficient solution they use to call R on their data, but anyway... >> >>So far, so good, they respect the GPL license since R is not embedded >>into PP, and you have to download and install it separately. >> >>But they also provide a series of "R component" ready to use like 'R >>ANOVA', 'R PCA', R Neural Net', etc... which are basically R scripts >>with replaceable variables (replacement is done by PP before feeding the >>script to the R engine). For instance, you will have: >> >>parameter <- $(PPvariable) >> >>in the R script. In the PP component, you have an option to specify the >>value of 'PPvariable', let's say: PPvariable = 10, and the replacement >>done in the R script is: >> >>parameter <- 10 >> >>before to feed this script to R. So, everything appears transparent to >>the end-user who parameterizes the scripts from within the PP GUI. That >>is what they call "each component generates an R script on-the-fly"... >>(sic!) >> >>However, I was suprised to learn that the Pipeline Pilot R Collection is >>not GPL and is not free (in term of money, i.e., you have to pay >>3500$/year to use it). I am not sure, but I think they break the GPL >>license here since they use a commercial license for, basically, a >>collection of R scripts embedded in their 'PP components'. >> >>Anyone with better expertise than me could look at this, please? > > > Offhand, I don't think this is a problem. > > We've discussed a few similar cases. Things are sometimes slightly > murky due to the FSF's unclear (or undecided) definition of the > relation between "linking" and "derived work". However, it was never > the intention that GPL code could not be _used_ by non-free software. > That point might get clearer if you substitute mySql or a similar > database instead of R. > > There are some limitations though. In particular if the connection is > so tight that R has become an integrated part of the application, then > the rules for derived works may apply. > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
