[BioC] GeneSpring can call R functions?

[Ken Termiso]

Hi all,

I was chatting with a friend of mine yesterday who was griping about how 
he's stuck with GeneSpring and how he wishes he could learn R in a 
reasonable amount of time, and he showed me his Genespring layout on his 
computer...

GeneSpring now apparently can call R functions from the command line on a 
windows PC (GeneSpring apparently isn't very stable on anything else...LOL). 
I think I saw one to do an RMA norm of CEL files, and I'm not sure what 
else, but what I'm wondering is whether or not this is actually legal? If 
I'm a software developer, can I just go ahead and write a little GUI on top 
of R and sell it?? This seems like outright thievery to me.

It's probably safe to say that most of the algorithms in GeneSpring are 
probably ripped straight from open source software, repackaged in a pretty 
GUI, and resold, but it seems that this is a little bit over the line...

just my .02

What do you think?