[R-gui] RE: [R] The hidden costs of GPL software?

[Thomas Lumley]

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