[R] License Question

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 10/27/2008 1:19 PM, Barry Rowlingson wrote:
> 2008/10/27 Freiberger, Katrin <Katrin.Freiberger at adbag.de>:
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I learned about R during my studies at Cologne University of Applied Science. Now I work at Allianz Dresdner Bauspar AG and I would like to install R here too. Is there any license issues that need to be taken in consideration, any fees to pay by the company? I know there are answers to this in the FAQs but I didn't really understand the legal language. Could you therefore just give me concrete answers?
>>
> 
>   When you use R, there is no license agreement in place at all. You
> have not, and do not have to, agree to anything in order to use R. You
> are free to use it in any way.
> 
>  When people say 'R is licensed under the GPL', that is purely
> applicable to copying and distribution of the R software.
> 
>  Other software licenses do cover usage, and forbid you from modifying
> or inspecting the program in certain ways. These are usually the
> licenses you have to click-through to run the program, since this is
> supposed to indicate that you have read and agreed to the license.
> There is no click-through license when you start R, because you don't
> have to agree with the GPL just to use R.

Actually, there's a click-through license on the Mac binary, probably 
because it's hard to turn it off.  There used to be one on the Windows 
binary install, until I worked out how to avoid it.

Duncan Murdoch