zerfetzen
2008-Jul-28 18:32 UTC
[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License
Hi, I use R at home, and am interested in using it at my work company (which is in the Fortune 100). I began the request, and our legal team has given some gruff about the open source license. Not boring you with the details here, but I used some info on gnu.org as a rebuttal, and someone at the company replied that the generalities of GNU GPL may differ from R's specific GNU GPL license, and that I should refer specifically to it, and it should be on the CRAN website. I may be blind, but haven't seen such a document. Does one exist, and how may I obtain it? I believe they are wrong. Our legal team is notorious for being overly conservative, and I'm personally betting they think I won't look into it, and then they won't have to deal with it. But I will, and I want to use R. Thanks. PS Sorry if the document was posted and obvious, and I simply couldn't find it. Thanks. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Legality-Question-about-R%27s-Open-Source-GNU-GPL-License-tp18696623p18696623.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Jim Porzak
2008-Jul-28 19:22 UTC
[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License
All this is included in the distribution in "doc" folder: 1. see FAQ: "2.11 Can I use R for commercial purposes?" 2. Specific GNU License is in file COPYING HTH, Jim Porzak Responsys, Inc. San Francisco, CA http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimporzak On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:32 AM, zerfetzen <zerfetzen at yahoo.com> wrote:> > Hi, > I use R at home, and am interested in using it at my work company (which is > in the Fortune 100). I began the request, and our legal team has given some > gruff about the open source license. Not boring you with the details here, > but I used some info on gnu.org as a rebuttal, and someone at the company > replied that the generalities of GNU GPL may differ from R's specific GNU > GPL license, and that I should refer specifically to it, and it should be on > the CRAN website. > > I may be blind, but haven't seen such a document. Does one exist, and how > may I obtain it? I believe they are wrong. Our legal team is notorious for > being overly conservative, and I'm personally betting they think I won't > look into it, and then they won't have to deal with it. But I will, and I > want to use R. Thanks. > > PS > Sorry if the document was posted and obvious, and I simply couldn't find it. > Thanks. > -- > View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Legality-Question-about-R%27s-Open-Source-GNU-GPL-License-tp18696623p18696623.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >
Patrick Burns
2008-Jul-28 19:27 UTC
[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License
I'll leave it to someone else to answer the question that you asked, but I don't mind answering the question that you didn't ask: Are there alternatives ways of getting R into the company? Yes. There are now some commercially supported versions of R -- see 'What is R-plus?' in the R-FAQ for a list. I'm not sure that one of these will work in your case, in my experience it is generally IT departments rather than legal departments that baulk at R. It is also my experience that, as of late, IT departments have tended to realize that something free and massively powerful might not be such a bad thing after all. Patrick Burns patrick at burns-stat.com +44 (0)20 8525 0696 http://www.burns-stat.com (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User") zerfetzen wrote:> Hi, > I use R at home, and am interested in using it at my work company (which is > in the Fortune 100). I began the request, and our legal team has given some > gruff about the open source license. Not boring you with the details here, > but I used some info on gnu.org as a rebuttal, and someone at the company > replied that the generalities of GNU GPL may differ from R's specific GNU > GPL license, and that I should refer specifically to it, and it should be on > the CRAN website. > > I may be blind, but haven't seen such a document. Does one exist, and how > may I obtain it? I believe they are wrong. Our legal team is notorious for > being overly conservative, and I'm personally betting they think I won't > look into it, and then they won't have to deal with it. But I will, and I > want to use R. Thanks. > > PS > Sorry if the document was posted and obvious, and I simply couldn't find it. > Thanks. >
Duncan Murdoch
2008-Jul-28 19:29 UTC
[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License
On 7/28/2008 2:32 PM, zerfetzen wrote:> Hi, > I use R at home, and am interested in using it at my work company (which is > in the Fortune 100). I began the request, and our legal team has given some > gruff about the open source license. Not boring you with the details here, > but I used some info on gnu.org as a rebuttal, and someone at the company > replied that the generalities of GNU GPL may differ from R's specific GNU > GPL license, and that I should refer specifically to it, and it should be on > the CRAN website. > > I may be blind, but haven't seen such a document. Does one exist, and how > may I obtain it? I believe they are wrong. Our legal team is notorious for > being overly conservative, and I'm personally betting they think I won't > look into it, and then they won't have to deal with it. But I will, and I > want to use R. Thanks. > > PS > Sorry if the document was posted and obvious, and I simply couldn't find it. > Thanks.It is distributed with R, in the file COPYING. If you haven't installed R yet, you can get just that one file from https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/COPYING That is the current development version of R, but that particular file hasn't changed since January 2006, and even then it was only a trivial change to the address of the FSF. The substance of the file hasn't changed since 1997, when our version tracking began. Duncan Murdoch
Marc Schwartz
2008-Jul-28 19:34 UTC
[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License
on 07/28/2008 01:32 PM zerfetzen wrote:> Hi, > I use R at home, and am interested in using it at my work company (which is > in the Fortune 100). I began the request, and our legal team has given some > gruff about the open source license. Not boring you with the details here, > but I used some info on gnu.org as a rebuttal, and someone at the company > replied that the generalities of GNU GPL may differ from R's specific GNU > GPL license, and that I should refer specifically to it, and it should be on > the CRAN website. > > I may be blind, but haven't seen such a document. Does one exist, and how > may I obtain it? I believe they are wrong. Our legal team is notorious for > being overly conservative, and I'm personally betting they think I won't > look into it, and then they won't have to deal with it. But I will, and I > want to use R. Thanks. > > PS > Sorry if the document was posted and obvious, and I simply couldn't find it. > Thanks.The license is available online here: http://www.r-project.org/COPYING and there is a file called 'COPYING' in your R installation. Note that if you are simply using R and are not planning to distribute it or associated applications/packages, the GPL does not really come into play. The sticky issue with the GPL comes into play when you are going to distribute R and/or are going to link programs to R (which generally means compiled programs) and are then going to distribute those. In these situations, the GPL would require you to make the source code for R AND YOUR PROGRAMS available to the end-users. This might not be an issue if you are only going to do this within your company, such that any proprietary code you might create would not go outside the company. More information is available here in FAQ form: http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Can-I-use-R-for-commercial-purposes_003f and here: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html BTW, does anyone in your company use Linux, Apache, Subversion/CVS, Firefox/Thunderbird or other open source applications? Potential for double standard? You might also want to show them this page: http://www.r-project.org/foundation/memberlist.html to give them an idea of who is using R. HTH, Marc Schwartz <Insert favorite lawyer joke here...>
zerfetzen
2008-Jul-28 20:03 UTC
[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License
Thanks to each of you for your excellent input. I have copied the file and will read it tonight. I haven't run into any heat from IT, but if I do, it will be in the near future. The exact legal issue was touched upon. There was a concern that anything associated with R (my code, etc.) would have to be made public, legally, if demanded. I thought that was absurd. Before I came to this company a few years ago, I interviewed at Amazon.com in Seattle, and in that interview, it was explained to me that their entire computer network, at least as far as I would be concerned, was all Linux. Well, that's open source as well. But of course there could be fine legal differences. Gnu.org said the same thing, under its FAQ, that there is no legal risk to use it at work, in the sense that you'd have to divulge anything. It even said you could modify source code and use it at work. No problems. But, like was said, there could be a problem if you distribute it. But I'm just a simple user, looking for a much better range of statistical, mathematical, and optimization methods than SAS STAT and SAS ETS offer. For me, I will slowly try to convert my SAS code at work to R script. I've seen the light. Cheers and thanks for the good feedback. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Legality-Question-about-R%27s-Open-Source-GNU-GPL-License-tp18696623p18698452.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
David Henderson
2008-Jul-29 18:46 UTC
[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License
Hi All: I know this has been discussed at length already, but 1) I get R-Help in digest and didn't see this until 3am Pacific time this morning, and 2) We, REvolution, have been discussing this as of late. I thought I would pass on some of the knowledge we have recently obtained vis a vis the GPL and R. First, I would like to say that you have already received some great advice and some good pointers to information about R and its use of the GPL. I'm only hoping to augment that information. Plus, I'm not a lawyer, but I have been visiting with lawyers a lot lately and this information comes from my interpretation of what they have told me about the GPL, specifically with respect to R. With respect to your specific question, the GPL license in R would only have bearing on your code should you decide to distribute it and only when you distribute it and then only if you linked some compiled code to it (think C/C++/FORTRAN). So, if you are only distributing the compiled code within your corporation, you only have to provide the source for your code to your own colleagues as the GPL states that the code must be available upon request and only your colleagues should know about the code's existence to request it. If you are only creating script, then the GPL license provided in R provides an exception as discussed below. Note that installing R on your system does not GPL license all code on your system. The topic of Linux being GPL is not really relevant. Generally, software libraries in Linux are provided with a LGPL license to avoid the GPL problem you describe. Also, there are exceptions in the GPL for Linux device drivers to prevent them from infecting code in Linux. So, using Linux is a different discussion than using R. A better analogy for using R in corporate environments than something like apache is the BASH shell. BASH is GPL, but your BASH script is not GPL as there is an exception in the standard GPL for interpreted languages. With respect to commercial versions of R, these R distributions will not have different licenses than the GPL already in R. Unless all of R Core and other copyright holders to the R source provide an exception to the GPL license in R, any commercial distribution of R will also have the same GPL license. It is doubtful that an exception will ever be granted for the R source code itself. What these commercial distributions do provide is support and services on top of open source R and in our case replacement of the BLAS routines with optimized ones. 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. And again, I am not a lawyer and you are receiving third hand information (some lawyers to me, and from me to you). By the way, I enjoyed the y0k discussion... Thanks!! Dave H On Jul 29, 2008, at 3:00 AM, r-help-request at r-project.org wrote:> From: zerfetzen <zerfetzen at yahoo.com> > Date: July 28, 2008 11:32:04 AM PDT > To: r-help at r-project.org > Subject: [R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License > > > > Hi, > I use R at home, and am interested in using it at my work company > (which is > in the Fortune 100). I began the request, and our legal team has > given some > gruff about the open source license. Not boring you with the > details here, > but I used some info on gnu.org as a rebuttal, and someone at the > company > replied that the generalities of GNU GPL may differ from R's > specific GNU > GPL license, and that I should refer specifically to it, and it > should be on > the CRAN website. > > I may be blind, but haven't seen such a document. Does one exist, > and how > may I obtain it? I believe they are wrong. Our legal team is > notorious for > being overly conservative, and I'm personally betting they think I > won't > look into it, and then they won't have to deal with it. But I will, > and I > want to use R. Thanks. > > PS > Sorry if the document was posted and obvious, and I simply couldn't > find it. > Thanks. > -- > View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Legality-Question-about-R%27s-Open-Source-GNU-GPL-License-tp18696623p18696623.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.-- David Henderson, Ph.D. Director of Community REvolution Computing 1100 Dexter Avenue North, Suite 250 206-577-4778 x3203 DNADave at REvolution-Computing.Com http://www.revolution-computing.com
zerfetzen
2008-Aug-05 18:19 UTC
[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License
I just wanted to let everyone know the good news, that I was approved to use R at work by legal and compliance. Now to begin learning here. Speaking of, is there anyone who is an expert at R and would be willing to have our company pay them as a consultant to come to my place of work (in Connecticut) and tutor me (and possibly others), to pass off some R wisdom? I have learned a lot of basics from free online R manuals, but would like human instruction as well, if possible. There are no specific things I'm looking to learn at the moment, other than to gain a broader, basic working knowledge with R. I work in a marketing department for an insurance company, and even though I don't have specific questions on methods in R, here is a little background. We use multinomial logit (and have attempted some discrete choice methods) regarding mailing campaigns. There is also a departmental push toward optimization methods, segmentation, as well as refining the forecasting of call volume (those who respond to mailings). Of course, there are many more statistical things we do, but this should give an idea. If anyone is interested, please call 860-276-2731. Thanks. PS I apologize if I shouldn't have posted that here for any reason. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Legality-Question-about-R%27s-Open-Source-GNU-GPL-License-tp18696623p18837036.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.