R devel - Oct 2008 - Possible GPL Violation

Hi All,

 

I was cruising around today, and came across a company (ZumaStat) that adds
additional statistics functionality to SPSS.

 
>From the Website:
http://www.zumastat.com/robust_statistics.htm

 

"ZumaStat provides a user friendly interface to access powerful statistical
programs on robust statistics that are available in the computer package
called R, which is available free.  Most of the R functions were written by
Professor Rand Wilcox of the University of Southern California and are
described in his three books:"

 

It seems unlikely that the functionality of this program can be separated
from the R-packages upon which it relies, thus making them one work subject
to GPL. Does anyone have any experience with this software/company? Any
thoughts?

 

 

Ian


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

> It seems unlikely that the functionality of this program can be separated
> from the R-packages upon which it relies, thus making them one work subject
> to GPL. Does anyone have any experience with this software/company? Any
> thoughts?
 They're not distributing R itself:

 "You must have R on your computer to use these programs.  R is
freeware and complete instructions for obtaining and installing it are
contained in ZumaStat."

 - and there's no reason why you can't distribute your own R functions
under any license you want.

 So, not a GPL violation in my opinion. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer,
although I read some of my ex-girlfriend's contract law books...

Barry

Ian Fellows wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
>  
> 
> I was cruising around today, and came across a company (ZumaStat) that adds
> additional statistics functionality to SPSS.
> 
>  
> 
>>From the Website:
> 
> http://www.zumastat.com/robust_statistics.htm
> 
>  
> 
> "ZumaStat provides a user friendly interface to access powerful
statistical
> programs on robust statistics that are available in the computer package
> called R, which is available free.  Most of the R functions were written by
> Professor Rand Wilcox of the University of Southern California and are
> described in his three books:"
> 
>  
> 
> It seems unlikely that the functionality of this program can be separated
> from the R-packages upon which it relies, thus making them one work subject
> to GPL. Does anyone have any experience with this software/company? Any
> thoughts?
As far as I can see they are using R to run prof. Wilcox's R functions. 
This is not the same as the "robust" package. Judging from his
website,
prof. Wilcox doesn't believe in packaging nor licencing; all his 
functions are just stored in one big file. However, even if he had a GPL 
on his code, there's no telling whether he did a dual licencing deal 
with ZumaSoft. As it stands, I suspect that he's just happy with the 
exposure his books are getting.

That leaves the question of whether they might be infringing upon R 
itself. There ae some really murky legal areas around linking, plugins, 
and interfacing to GPL'd programs (when does something become a 
"derivative work"?), but I don't think this is a good case to test
them out.


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