[R] Regarding licensing Terms

[Marc Schwartz]

On Oct 3, 2012, at 4:49 AM, Narendra <pratap.narendra at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have developed one application using ggmap package.It is based on google
> map.
> I am a bit confused regarding its licensing terms.I want to know that can i
> use it with my other applications.
> Is it legal?



In the case of a third party CRAN package, you are better off contacting the package maintainers directly.

With the caveat that I am not a lawyer, ggmap appears to be distributed under the MIT license, which is more liberal than say the GPL. There is some information here regarding the MIT license:

  http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

which may be helpful.

Depending upon what you may be planning to do with your applications (eg. integrate ggmap and sell your software) you should definitely contact a lawyer with specific expertise in open source software licenses before proceeding. If you simply plan to use ggmap and your software, without subsequent distribution, then even the GPL would allow you to do that without restrictions. 

Most critical issues vis-a-vis open source licenses come into play when you cross the line from simply being a user/developer to copying and distributing. In the latter case, whether you plan to charge for the resultant product or make it available for free, is irrelevant.

Regards,

Marc Schwartz