[R] [FORGED] Re: Regarding R licensing usage guidance

[Rolf Turner]

Jeff:  Your comments are often (almost always?) a bit rough about the 
edges, and on the recipient, but are always cogent.  Although John M. 
has a valid point, I tend to agree with you.  I would say that if you 
want to make money, trying to sell your own software is a bad way to go 
about it, GPL or no GPL.

Rather like being an actor; you will almost surely starve.   The 
difference with actors is that a tiny fraction of them sometimes make 
big bucks.  Whereas, with selling your own software, never.  (And 
*please* don't hold up Bill Gates as a counterexample.  He did not make 
his big bucks by selling his own software.  He made them from wheeling 
and dealing and selling *other people's* software.  E.g. "MSDOS" was 
just a renaming of "QDOS" ("Quick and Dirty Operating System") which 
Gates bought for 50 thousand US dollars.)

cheers,

Rolf

P.S. To Anamika:  Please do not post in HTML.

R.

On 24/07/19 11:21 AM, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> Your feelings are noted, but my comment about skills was not directed at the person of Anamika but at their skills, so no, it was not ad hominem.
> 
> Regarding the word "odious"... I think that wrapping GPL software in a proprietary blob is ethically flawed, and that word is appropriate regardless of the possible economic disadvantage someone might have who commits that behavior. I have no problem with people generating proprietary blobs of code they wrote combined with supporting code licensed in a way that allows for such use... my employers have paid me to produce such works in the past, but such blobs should rightfully reflect the work input by the programmer and not the massive input by people not being properly compensated for building such an extensive foundation. (Even if the only thing those programmers asked for was that you release your code as well if you use their code.)
> 
> Proprietary code is expensive. For a reason. And in the long run it always loses to the commoditization of software. And cheating to delay that outcome is *odious*.
> 
> I highly recommend using a language other than R if you don't plan to distribute source code with your software. That will simplify the licensing issue significantly and make distributing the blob much more straightforward.
> 
> On July 23, 2019 2:10:30 PM PDT, "Weiwen Ng, MPH" <ngxxx262 using umn.edu> wrote:
>> The ad hominem comment about Google skills is also out of line. Knowing
>> what to search for is often not trivial. The problem is magnified if
>> English isn't your native language.
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 3:59 PM John Maindonald
>> <john.maindonald using anu.edu.au>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I think this unfair, certainly the ‘odious’ comment.  Very many of us
>>> have been able to contribute because supported to do such work
>>> while occupying relatively comfortable academic positions.  In the
>>> process of getting there, we have benefited enormously from the
>>> work of those who have gone before.  I do not know what Anamika’s
>>> position is, but he may well be trying to build a business from a
>>> much less privileged starting point than others of us may have
>>> enjoyed.  In any case, the comment strikes a tone that is out of
>>> place in respectful discourse.
>>>
>>>
>>> John Maindonald             email: john.maindonald using anu.edu.au<mailto:
>>> john.maindonald using anu.edu.au>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 23/07/2019, at 22:00, r-help-request using r-project.org<mailto:
>>> r-help-request using r-project.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> From: Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil using dcn.davis.ca.us<mailto:
>>> jdnewmil using dcn.davis.ca.us>>
>>> Subject: Re: [R] Regarding R licensing usage guidance
>>> Date: 23 July 2019 at 07:00:26 NZST
>>> To: <r-help using r-project.org<mailto:r-help using r-project.org>>, ANAMIKA
>> KUMARI <
>>> anamika1302 using gmail.com<mailto:anamika1302 using gmail.com>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Your internet skills are pathetic. Search Google for "proprietary use
>> gpl"
>>> and the first hit is
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7078/is-it-legal-to-use-gpl-code-in-a-proprietary-closed-source-program-by-putting-i
>>>
>>> Note that there are (at least) three obvious alternatives if there is
>> any
>>> question in your case: release the code under GPL but also sell it
>> with
>>> support (a la RStudio); only use it yourself (don't distribute it at
>> all);
>>> or only use R for setting up your models but re-engineer
>> implementations of
>>> the run-time prediction calculations yourself (often much easier than
>> the
>>> initial algorithm development).
>>>
>>> I think your desperation to steal the hard work of the various R
>>> contributors seems quite odious.
>>>
>>> On July 22, 2019 6:55:31 AM PDT, ANAMIKA KUMARI
>> <anamika1302 using gmail.com
>>> <mailto:anamika1302 using gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> Hello Team,
>>>
>>> This mail is in reference to understanding R  license and also usage
>> of
>>> R
>>> language to develop commercialised product.
>>>
>>> I am working on one product of mine that uses R and python language.I
>>> am
>>> trying to understand the licensing issue if any related to R, if I am
>>> going
>>> to commercialise my product and keep my work proprietary.
>>>
>>> I need your help to understand it. R comes under GNU-GPL-2.0. Now, do
>> I
>>> need to share source code of my product. if, I am moving planning  to
>>> move
>>> it to production or I can keep my code Proprietary.
>>>
>>> Please note that I am just using R and its packages to  develop my
>> own
>>> statistical tool and api and Have not done any changes to existing R
>>> code.
>>>
>>> Please refer below for all R-packages used in my code:-
>>>
>>>   1.
>>> *R-3.4.4 *
>>>   2. *'spacyr'*
>>>   3.
>>> *'jsonlite' *
>>>   4.
>>> *'lubridate' *
>>>   5.
>>> *'data.table' *
>>>   6.
>>> *'png' *
>>>   7.
>>> *'maps' *
>>>   8.
>>> *'countrycode' *
>>>   9.
>>> *'humaniformat' *
>>>   10.
>>> *'ngram' *
>>>   11.
>>> *'stringr' *
>>>   12.
>>> *'slam' *
>>>   13.
>>> *'tm' *
>>>   14.
>>> *'lsa' *
>>>   15.
>>> *'RTextTools' *
>>>   16.
>>> *'stringi' *
>>>   17.
>>> *'plumber' *
>>>   18. *"Rook"*
>>>   19. *"pdftools"*
>>>   20. *'tokenizers'*
>>>   21. *'zoo'*
>>>   22. *"tidyr"*
>>>   23. *"reqres"*
>>>   24. *"rJava"*
>>>   25. *"tiff"*
>>>   26. *"splitstackshape"*
>>>   27. *"stringdist"*
>>>   28. *"RJSONIO"*
>>>   29. *"ropensci/tabulizer"*
>>>   30. *"staplr"*
>>>   31. *"SparseM"*
>>>   32. *"randomForest"*
>>>   33. *"e1071"*
>>>   34. *"ipred"*
>>>   35. *"caTools"*
>>>   36. *RCMD INSTALL maxent_1.3.3.1.tar.gz*
>>>   37. *RCMD INSTALL tree_1.0-39.tar.gz*
>>>   38. *RCMD INSTALL RTextTools_1.4.2.tar.gz*
>>>
>>>
>>> *Any help from you will be highly appreciated as I am literally stuck
>>> at a
>>> dead end.*
>>>
>>> *Regards*
>>> *Anamika Kumari*
>>>
>>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

-- 
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276