John W. Eaton wrote:> On 17-Nov-2004, Philippe Grosjean <phgrosjean at sciviews.org> wrote: > > | - There is no possibility to make a commercial GUI for R (thanks to > | the GPL), > > This is false. Please don't confuse "commercial" (Red Hat > and SuSE GNU/Linux distributions are commercial software) > with "proprietary". > > jweOoops! Sorry, and thank you for correcting me. I mean "proprietary", of course. Best, Philippe Grosjean
On Thu, 18 Nov 2004, Philippe Grosjean wrote:> John W. Eaton wrote: >> On 17-Nov-2004, Philippe Grosjean <phgrosjean at sciviews.org> wrote: >> >> | - There is no possibility to make a commercial GUI for R (thanks to >> | the GPL), >> >> This is false. Please don't confuse "commercial" (Red Hat >> and SuSE GNU/Linux distributions are commercial software) >> with "proprietary". >> >> jwe > > Ooops! Sorry, and thank you for correcting me. I mean "proprietary", of > course. > Best, >And it isn't obvious that it is true even if you mean proprietary. A GUI that ran R just by sending commands to stdin and getting results from stdout could clearly be proprietary without violating the GPL. The question of exactly what level of closer integration is allowed would get complicated and I won't speculate. -thomas
Philippe Grosjean wrote:>John W. Eaton wrote: > > >>On 17-Nov-2004, Philippe Grosjean <phgrosjean at sciviews.org> wrote: >> >>| - There is no possibility to make a commercial GUI for R (thanks to >>| the GPL), >> >>This is false. Please don't confuse "commercial" (Red Hat >>and SuSE GNU/Linux distributions are commercial software) >>with "proprietary". >> >>jwe >> >> > >Ooops! Sorry, and thank you for correcting me. I mean "proprietary", of >course. >Best, > >Philippe Grosjean > >This thread has gone to be centered around the GUI of R and what it is good and bad. However, is the above statement correct? To me it seems like there is a fully working R-proxy dll for windows and other ways to interface against R that only binds to LGPL components. You can build completely proprietary packages and front-ends to R without having to make sources available, as long as you distribute changes to R itself as source. In my opinion anyone can be to R what S+ is to S. Can any developer comment on this? Best regards, David