But its value to you and whether or not you would pay for it is a completely separate matter from whether or not they are violating the R license by selling their R collection. I imagine a discussion of the latter is on-topic for this list, less so for the former, I'd imagine.
Cyrus On Apr 19, 2006, at 11:45 AM, Philippe Grosjean wrote: > I understand that it is difficult to make the distinction between > "linking" and "derived work". Whatever the conclusion, I always feel a > little bit abused when someone wants to "sell" me R somehow (here, you > have to pay 3500$/year to use R inside of Pipeline Pilot). I would > accept to pay this money if I was in front of R experts that sell me > their expertise, indeed. But this is not the case: they don't know > much > about R, and they made a really ugly and inefficient interface between > PP and R that is not worth those 3500$/year. > > Best, > > Philippe Grosjean > > Peter Dalgaard wrote: >> Philippe Grosjean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >> >>> Hello all, >>> >>> Sorry for this email not directly related to R developement. I >>> just come >>> from a nice demonstration session from Scitegic about their Pipeline >>> Pilot (PP) software, and especially their 'R collection' which >>> brings R >>> calculations into the software >>> (http://www.scitegic.com/documents/RStats_Collection.pdf). >>> >>> I looked carefully on the way they do it: they pass data from PP >>> to R >>> using text files, they call R.exe using a R script and input - >>> output >>> files, like: >>> >>> R.exe --nosave --no-environ --no-resore-data < script.R > output.txt >>> >>> And in the script, you have: >>> >>> read.table(...) >>> >>> which imports the data just exported from PP in an CVS file by the >>> component. I don't want to discuss here the ugly and extremely >>> inefficient solution they use to call R on their data, but anyway... >>> >>> So far, so good, they respect the GPL license since R is not >>> embedded >>> into PP, and you have to download and install it separately. >>> >>> But they also provide a series of "R component" ready to use like 'R >>> ANOVA', 'R PCA', R Neural Net', etc... which are basically R scripts >>> with replaceable variables (replacement is done by PP before >>> feeding the >>> script to the R engine). For instance, you will have: >>> >>> parameter <- $(PPvariable) >>> >>> in the R script. In the PP component, you have an option to >>> specify the >>> value of 'PPvariable', let's say: PPvariable = 10, and the >>> replacement >>> done in the R script is: >>> >>> parameter <- 10 >>> >>> before to feed this script to R. So, everything appears >>> transparent to >>> the end-user who parameterizes the scripts from within the PP >>> GUI. That >>> is what they call "each component generates an R script on-the- >>> fly"... >>> (sic!) >>> >>> However, I was suprised to learn that the Pipeline Pilot R >>> Collection is >>> not GPL and is not free (in term of money, i.e., you have to pay >>> 3500$/year to use it). I am not sure, but I think they break the GPL >>> license here since they use a commercial license for, basically, a >>> collection of R scripts embedded in their 'PP components'. >>> >>> Anyone with better expertise than me could look at this, please? >> >> >> Offhand, I don't think this is a problem. >> >> We've discussed a few similar cases. Things are sometimes slightly >> murky due to the FSF's unclear (or undecided) definition of the >> relation between "linking" and "derived work". However, it was never >> the intention that GPL code could not be _used_ by non-free software. >> That point might get clearer if you substitute mySql or a similar >> database instead of R. >> >> There are some limitations though. In particular if the connection is >> so tight that R has become an integrated part of the application, >> then >> the rules for derived works may apply. >> > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
