[R] R -Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License

Marc Schwartz marc_schwartz at comcast.net
Wed Jul 30 17:56:35 CEST 2008


on 07/30/2008 10:35 AM ohri2007 at gmail.com wrote:
> now which license to use?
> 
> it is bad enough explaining SaaS (software as a service), and open
> source and data mining to lawyers, without the experts fighting it as
> well.
> 
> and who pays for the cloud computing expenses  for me then if there is
> no money in it. cloud computing doesnt exist in India right now from
> where I am writing this?
> 

As I noted in my reply, there is nothing preventing you using FOSS to 
create a value added service, from which you can generate profitable 
income.

If there was, Red Hat would not be a public company with shareholders, 
Canonical (Ubuntu's commercial sponsor) would not exist and Dell would 
not be selling computers with Ubuntu pre-installed.

Whether anyone will actually pay you for your service is another 
question and a business risk that you have to evaluate.

That being said, if you are planning to start up a company based upon 
the use of FOSS as your foundation, get yourself a lawyer familiar with 
it and fire any lawyer that you are currently using who is not. There 
are lawyers with the requisite experience in both FOSS and IP.

This is not the proper forum to seek business development advice.

Marc Schwartz



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