[R] Building R for better performance

[John McKown]

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 10:00 PM, Simon Blomberg <s.blomberg1 at uq.edu.au> wrote:
> Is MKL open source software? If not, that could be the sticking point.
>
> Simon.

IANAL, but from reading here:
https://software.intel.com/en-us/en-us/intel-mkl
It is neither Libre nor Gratis. But it is royalty free. IOW, you
cannot give the software to another. You must pay a license fee to
Intel to use it. But you do not need to pay Intel any money to
distribute your executable to others. For a commercial license, it is
not too bad.

The best that I can see for R would be if someone were to post a "how
to use MKL for compiling R" type document. And if someone really
needed to have the MKL performance boost, they could license MKL for
themselves, modify R to use it, and recompile. I am not suggesting
this be done. But that would most likely mean that the modifier CAN
NOT distribute the changed R executable to others because of the GPL.
I'm pretty sure that mixing in licensed code with GPL'd code __and
distributing the executable__ is not kosher. That would violate
section #3 of the GPL.

-- 
There is nothing more pleasant than traveling and meeting new people!
Genghis Khan

Maranatha! <><
John McKown