[R] Question on if i am allowed to do something

[Marc Schwartz]

Giannis,

While your economic situation is appreciated, that you plan to give away your application and not generate any income from it, is irrelevant to the question.

The nuances as to how you are interfacing with R and that you plan to include R (importantly, possibly only a part of it) as a component of your application are. Not altering R's source code is similarly only one part of the issue, though if you were, you would be clearly crossing the line to a derivative work. However, even in that scenario there are other considerations as to whether or not those changes impact your application versus just the modified R code.

You are asking a legal question on a list that is focused on technical considerations and expecting the list participants to provide free legal advice, based upon which you may be making life altering decisions. While you may not be able to afford to pay a lawyer now, you and you partners may find yourselves needing to pay a lawyer in the future to defend yourselves against a lawsuit for copyright and licensing infringement. A situation, by the way, that won't be at all helpful to your future career.

You may wish to see if there are any lawyers locally or at your institution with specific experience in this domain who may be will to provide you with pro bono advice. Lacking expert legal advice, the only thing we can tell you is "don't do it" because you may be violating the GPL license and therefore may expose yourself and your partners to future legal risk.

Regards,

Marc

On May 24, 2012, at 7:23 AM, Giannis Mamalikidis wrote:

> Your answers were very helpful, thanks :)
> 
> But, you see, the program I'm writing will be a team effort - and while I have not problem on making this program an open source - we don't really see eye to eye with the team on this.
> So no source code will be available - just freeware.
> 
> R will not be at all altered! the only thing that R will do is be used to show a couple of plots, and make some t.test and ks.test.
> 
> Does that qualify as a derivative work of R? Or would derivative work be if I altered R's Source code?
> I've read the license but English is not my Native language, hence some terminology is unclear to me.
> 
> And I'm just an undergraduate with no income in the middle of an economy crisis. I don't really see me paying a lawyer to ask the question.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Giannis Mamalikidis
> e-mail: Giannis_Mamalikidis at msn.com
> Member of the STAINS Research Group
> (STAtistics & INformation Systems Group) of the
> Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
> Site: http://stains.csd.auth.gr
> B.Sc Student in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----Original Message----- From: Marc Schwartz
> Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 3:58 AM
> To: Duncan Murdoch
> Cc: Giannis Mamalikidis ; r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Question on if i am allowed to do something
> 
> 
> On May 23, 2012, at 6:51 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> 
>> On 12-05-23 1:31 PM, Giannis Mamalikidis wrote:
>>> Hello all.
>>> 
>>> I would like to know: provided that I absolutely state that R is not mine
>>> and I also include the R’s License which will be shown so people know R and
>>> R’s license,
>>> (provided the above) am I allowed to include R’s folder (the folder that has
>>> its binaries) on my freeware program or not?
>> 
>> R is licensed under the GPL v 2 or 3.  The recommended packages that come with it are separately licensed, but are also (mainly) GPL.  So just follow the terms of that license, which is included with R.
>> 
>> Duncan Murdoch
> 
> 
> Just to add on to Duncan's reply, you might want to review the GPL FAQ (and possibly consult a lawyer):
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
> 
> The use and distribution of R within your 'freeware' can place certain obligations on you, including possibly requiring that you license your application with a GPL compatible license and make the source code of your application available in situations where your application is 'linked' to R. If you do not intend to make your own source code available, you should be very clear on what the GPL requires of you before proceeding.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Marc Schwartz
>