[R-SIG-Finance] Spread discovery and backtester code

[soren wilkening]

I have not looked at chris's code in detail, but I downloaded the .zip and
there was no password protection and the R package it contains  consists of
a dll (his source i would presume, but not shared here) which has been
wrapped up in R functions.

Lets assume for a moment that the sourcecode on which the dll is based is
completely Chris's brainchild and work. In that case, wrapping it up in R
and making it available here, or anwhere else, is certainly NOT a violation
of GPL, because the dll is (assumption) not a *derivative* work of a GPL
product (xts, other packages, C source that is GPL, etc...) but his own.  In
that sense, i don't understand the rather frosty reception.

However, as has also been pointed out, distributing binary version of
something is not going to earn anyone any kudos in an open source community.
as simple as that.

Now if my assumption is wrong and the dll is indeed a *derivative* work of
something that itself is licensed under GPL, then and only then this whole
thing would be problematic and violate GPL. But the easiest fix would be to
include the dll's source in the package and voila! you are good to go.

The author would know best ...

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