[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License

[Charles Annis, P.E.]

Gad and David - would you be so kind as to include me in any off-line
discussion of this vital topic of R and GPL?

Many thanks.

Charles Annis, P.E.

Charles.Annis at StatisticalEngineering.com
phone: 561-352-9699
eFax:  614-455-3265
http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On
Behalf Of David Henderson
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 8:04 PM
To: Gad Abraham
Cc: r-help at r-project.org; zerfetzen
Subject: Re: [R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License

Hello Gad:

On Jul 29, 2008, at 4:41 PM, Gad Abraham wrote:

>> If your legal department is still concerned, have them look at the  
>> license in Java.  It most likely is GPL (unless you have a special  
>> commercial version of Java installed) and thus makes any Java  
>> program you create subject to the GPL in Java due to the JIT  
>> compiler used in Java.  If your legal department does not have a  
>> problem with Java, then they should not have a problem with R.
>
> This is conflating two issues, the license of the compiler/ 
> interpreter, and the license of the code you wrote in that language.
>
> From http://gplv3.fsf.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ_Update:
>
> ``Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non- 
> free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile  
> them?
>
> Yes, because the copyright on the editors and tools does not cover  
> the code you write. Using them does not place any restrictions,  
> legally, on the license you use for your code.
>
> Some programs copy parts of themselves into the output for technical  
> reasons--for example, Bison copies a standard parser program into  
> its output file. In such cases, the copied text in the output is  
> covered by the same license that covers it in the source code.  
> Meanwhile, the part of the output which is derived from the  
> program's input inherits the copyright status of the input.
>
> As it happens, Bison can also be used to develop non-free programs.  
> This is because we decided to explicitly permit the use of the Bison  
> standard parser program in Bison output files without restriction.  
> We made the decision because there were other tools comparable to  
> Bison which already permitted use for non-free programs.''


The issue I was addressing here was actually that when you write a  
Java program, it is compiled at runtime and then linked to the other  
com libraries that come with the installation that are under the GPL  
license.  It is this linking that happens at compile time that invokes  
the Java GPL over the license you apply to your code.

We should probably move this off-line if we need to discuss this  
further and maybe update the list once we've reached a conclusion (if  
we do), rather than continue a long off-topic, but relevant, discussion.

Thanks!!

Dave H
--
David Henderson, Ph.D.
1535 NW 51st ST
Seatle, WA 98107
206-794-8552
DNADavenator at GMail.Com

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