If the discussion on the GPL Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License ) is representative, you are not alone but nevertheless it is not clear-cut either. The debate revolves around the definition of "derived work" for software. If you fall into the camp that believes any call to a Linux-specific system call makes the calling program a derivative of Linux, then your example is clearly a violation. I think the majority view is that there are categories of linkage that remove the "derived work" designation even when the caller is useless without the callee. The GPLv3 implicitly acknowledges this as it addresses situations where the proprietary elements of a mixed system of proprietary and GPLed software impose constraints on substituting modified versions of the free software components (tivoization).

Short answer: the proprietary parts are asserted not to be "derived works". You are free to disagree, but only the judges' opinions count.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Newmiller The ..... ..... Go Live...
DCN:<jdnewmil@dcn.davis.ca.us> Basics: ##.#. ##.#. Live Go...
Live: OO#.. Dead: OO#.. Playing
Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries O.O#. #.O#. with
/Software/Embedded Controllers) .OO#. .OO#. rocks...1k
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

Matthew Dowle <mdowle@mdowle.plus.com> wrote:

Duncan, Letting you know then that I just don't see how the first paragraph here : http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/downloads/gpl-sources.php is compatible with clause 2(b) here : http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html Perhaps somebody could explain why it is? Matthew "Duncan Murdoch" <murdoch.duncan@gmail.com> wrote in message news:4D9DA9FF.9020103@gmail.com... > On 07/04/2011 7:47 AM, Matthew Dowle wrote: >> Peter, >> >> If the proprietary part of REvolution's product is ok, then surely >> Stanislav's suggestion is too. No? > > Revolution has said that they believe they follow the GPL, and they > haven't been challenged on that. If you think that they don't, you could > let an R copyright holder know what they're doing that's a license > violation. > > My opinion of Stanislav's question is that he doesn't give enough > information to answer. If he is planning to distribute R as part of his > product, he needs to follow the GPL. If not, I don't think any R > copyright ho
 lder
has anything to complain about. > > Duncan Murdoch > >> Matthew >> >> >> "peter dalgaard"<PDalgd@gmail.com> wrote in message >> news:BE157CF5-9B4B-45A0-A7D4-363B774F114A@gmail.com... >> > >> > On Apr 7, 2011, at 09:45 , Stanislav Bek wrote: >> > >> >> Hi, >> >> >> >> is it possible to use some statistic computing by R in proprietary >> >> software? >> >> Our software is written in c#, and we intend to use >> >> http://rdotnet.codeplex.com/ >> >> to get R work there. Especially we want to use loess function. >> > >> > You need to take legal advice to be certain, but offhand I would say >> > that >> > this kind of circumvention of the GPL is _not_ allowed. >> > >> > It all depends on whether the end product is a "derivative work", in >> > which >> > case, the whole must be distributed under a GPL-compatible licence. >> > The >> > situation around GPL-incompatible plug-ins or plug-ins interfacing to >> > R in >> > GPL -incompatible software is legally murky, but using R as a >> 
 >
subroutine >> > library for proprietary code is clearly crossing the line, as far as I >> > can >> > tell. >> > >> > -- >> > Peter Dalgaard >> > Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School >> > Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark >> > Phone: (+45)38153501 >> > Email: pd.mes@cbs.dk Priv: PDalgd@gmail.com >> > >> >>_____________________________________________
>> R-help@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >> PLEASE do read the posting guide >> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >_____________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. 


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

