[R] Using R in our commercial business application

[Louis Bajuk-Yorgan]

TERR (TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R) is an independent implementation of an
R-compatible engine (based on our long history and expertise with S+). One
of the features of TERR is that it can be licensed for embedding and
redistribution, since it is not subject to the GPL license.

For more information on TERR, Google "TIBCO TERR", and you will find an
overview website, a white paper, and link to download the free TERR
Developer's Edition (which is available to everyone in the R community, and
is compatible with RStudio).

If you'd like information on licensing TERR, or have any other questions,
please contact me directly (I'm the product manager for TERR).
TIBCOmmunity.com also has a TERR community site for answering questions
about TERR.

Regards
Lou Bajuk-Yorgan

-- 
Lou Bajuk-Yorgan
Sr. Director, Product Management
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
lbajuk at tibco.com
Twitter: @LouBajuk


On 19 Sep 2014, at 10:30 , Pasu <pasupathym at gmail.com
<https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help>> wrote:

>* Hi
*> >* Thanks to all for the inputs. It will also be great to get inputs on the
*>* procedure and the contact person for getting the commercial license on R
*> >* Rgds
*>* Pasu
*>* On 19-Sep-2014 2:13 AM, "Duncan Murdoch" <murdoch.duncan at
gmail.com <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help>> wrote:
*> >>* On 18/09/2014 2:35 PM, Marc Schwartz wrote:
*>> >>>* On Sep 18, 2014, at 4:36 AM, Pasu <pasupathym at gmail.com
<https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help>> wrote:
*>>> >>>>* Hi
*>>>> >>>>* I would like to know how to use R in our commercial
business application
*>>>>* which we plan to host in cloud or deploy on customer's premise.
*>>>> >>>>* 1. Using R and its package, does it enforce that my
commercial business
*>>>>* application should be distributed under GPL, as the statistical
*>>>* derivation
*>>>>* (output) by using R will be presented to the end users as part of of our
*>>>>* commercial business application
*>>>>* 2. Whom to contact to get commercial license if required for using R?
*>>>> >>>>* Rgds
*>>>>* Pasupathy
*>>> >>> >>>* You will not get a definitive legal opinion here and my
comments below do
*>>>* not represent any formal opinion on the part of any organization.
*>>> >>>* There is nothing preventing you or your company from using R as an end
*>>>* user. There are many of us who use R in commercial settings and
in general,
*>>>* the output of a GPL'd application (text or binary) is not considered to be
*>>>* also GPL'd.
*>>> >>>* The subtleties get into the distribution of R (which you
seem to plan to
*>>>* do), the nature of any additional functionality/code that you or your
*>>>* company may write/distribute, how that code interacts with R and/or
*>>>* modifies R source code copyrighted by the R Foundation and others. If you
*>>>* distribute R to clients, you will need to make R's source code
available to
*>>>* them in some manner along with any modifications to that same code, while
*>>>* preserving appropriate copyrights.
*>>> >>>* A proprietary (closed source) application cannot be licensed under the
*>>>* GPL, but your company's application/code may be forced to be GPL (the so
*>>>* called viral aspect of the GPL) depending upon how your application is
*>>>* implemented as I noted in the prior paragraph. Thus, you may be forced to
*>>>* make your source code available to your clients as well.
*>>> >>>* If you plan to move forward, you should consult with an attorney well
*>>>* educated in software licensing and distribution issues, especially as they
*>>>* pertain to the GPL. The risks are not inconsequential of falling on the
*>>>* wrong side of the GPL.
*>>> >>>* The official R distribution is not available via a commercial or
*>>>* developer license, but there are commercial vendors of R and a Google
*>>>* search will point you in their direction, if desired. However, since their
*>>>* products are founded upon the official R distribution and the GPL, they
*>>>* will have similar issues with respect to any enhancements that they have
*>>>* created and therefore, your concerns do not necessarily go away. They will
*>>>* have also consulted legal counsel on these issues because the viability of
*>>>* their business depends upon it.
*>>> >> >>* I agree with all of that but for one thing:  not all
distributions are
*>>* built on the GPL'd original.  I believe Tibco is selling an independent
*>>* implementation.
*>>

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