Question on if i am allowed to do something
On 12-05-24 8:23 AM, Giannis Mamalikidis wrote:
Your answers were very helpful, thanks :) But, you see, the program I'm writing will be a team effort - and while I have not problem on making this program an open source - we don't really see eye to eye with the team on this. So no source code will be available - just freeware. R will not be at all altered! the only thing that R will do is be used to show a couple of plots, and make some t.test and ks.test. Does that qualify as a derivative work of R? Or would derivative work be if I altered R's Source code?
I would say that makes your program a derivative work, so you should not distribute R as part of it. But I am not a lawyer; in fact, I'm an interested party: a copyright holder on parts of R. So I don't know if the law is on my side, but you can be assured that you are violating the wishes of at least one R copyright holder if you do distribute it in a closed source package. Duncan Murdoch
I've read the license but English is not my Native language, hence some terminology is unclear to me. And I'm just an undergraduate with no income in the middle of an economy crisis. I don't really see me paying a lawyer to ask the question. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Giannis Mamalikidis e-mail: Giannis_Mamalikidis at msn.com Member of the STAINS Research Group (STAtistics& INformation Systems Group) of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Site: http://stains.csd.auth.gr B.Sc Student in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: Marc Schwartz Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 3:58 AM To: Duncan Murdoch Cc: Giannis Mamalikidis ; r-help at r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] Question on if i am allowed to do something On May 23, 2012, at 6:51 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
On 12-05-23 1:31 PM, Giannis Mamalikidis wrote:
Hello all. I would like to know: provided that I absolutely state that R is not mine and I also include the R?s License which will be shown so people know R and R?s license, (provided the above) am I allowed to include R?s folder (the folder that has its binaries) on my freeware program or not?
R is licensed under the GPL v 2 or 3. The recommended packages that come with it are separately licensed, but are also (mainly) GPL. So just follow the terms of that license, which is included with R. Duncan Murdoch
Just to add on to Duncan's reply, you might want to review the GPL FAQ (and possibly consult a lawyer): http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html The use and distribution of R within your 'freeware' can place certain obligations on you, including possibly requiring that you license your application with a GPL compatible license and make the source code of your application available in situations where your application is 'linked' to R. If you do not intend to make your own source code available, you should be very clear on what the GPL requires of you before proceeding. Regards, Marc Schwartz