From phgrosjean at sciviews.org  Wed Apr 19 20:34:52 2006
From: phgrosjean at sciviews.org (Philippe Grosjean)
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 20:34:52 +0200
Subject: [Rd] commercial software selling a R module - question about
 GPL license rights
In-Reply-To: <39B6DDB9048D0F4DAD42CB26AAFF0AFAFEDADA@usctmx1106.merck.com>
References: <39B6DDB9048D0F4DAD42CB26AAFF0AFAFEDADA@usctmx1106.merck.com>
Message-ID: <444682CC.6010807@sciviews.org>

Oh, yes! There is also a RSoap interface. I did not mention it.

Best,

Philippe Grosjean

Liaw, Andy wrote:
> I was under the impression that PP communicates with R via SOAP, but
> what do I know...
> 
> If I didn't read your description wrong, the "R Collection" contains
> PP code (PilotScript?) for generating R code to be run by R, but does
> not include R itself.  If that's the case, I don't think it has any 
> licensing problem.  If I write some R code that generates SAS code
> (God forbid), I doubt that constitute violation of SAS license.
> 
> Just my $0.02...
> 
> Andy
> 
> From: Philippe Grosjean
> 
>>Hello all,
>>
>>Sorry for this email not directly related to R developement. 
>>I just come 
>>from a nice demonstration session from Scitegic about their Pipeline 
>>Pilot (PP) software, and especially their 'R collection' 
>>which brings R 
>>calculations into the software 
>>(http://www.scitegic.com/documents/RStats_Collection.pdf).
>>
>>I looked carefully on the way they do it: they pass data from PP to R 
>>using text files, they call R.exe using a R script and input - output 
>>files, like:
>>
>>R.exe --nosave --no-environ --no-resore-data < script.R > output.txt
>>
>>And in the script, you have:
>>
>>read.table(...)
>>
>>which imports the data just exported from PP in an CVS file by the 
>>component. I don't want to discuss here the ugly and extremely 
>>inefficient solution they use to call R on their data, but anyway...
>>
>>So far, so good, they respect the GPL license since R is not embedded 
>>into PP, and you have to download and install it separately.
>>
>>But they also provide a series of "R component" ready to use like 'R 
>>ANOVA', 'R PCA', R Neural Net', etc... which are basically R scripts 
>>with replaceable variables (replacement is done by PP before 
>>feeding the 
>>script to the R engine). For instance, you will have:
>>
>>parameter <- $(PPvariable)
>>
>>in the R script. In the PP component, you have an option to 
>>specify the 
>>value of 'PPvariable', let's say: PPvariable = 10, and the 
>>replacement 
>>done in the R script is:
>>
>>parameter <- 10
>>
>>before to feed this script to R. So, everything appears 
>>transparent to 
>>the end-user who parameterizes the scripts from within the PP 
>>GUI. That 
>>is what they call "each component generates an R script 
>>on-the-fly"... 
>>(sic!)
>>
>>However, I was suprised to learn that the Pipeline Pilot R 
>>Collection is 
>>not GPL and is not free (in term of money, i.e., you have to pay 
>>3500$/year to use it). I am not sure, but I think they break the GPL 
>>license here since they use a commercial license for, basically, a 
>>collection of R scripts embedded in their 'PP components'.
>>
>>Anyone with better expertise than me could look at this, please?
>>
>>Best,
>>
>>Philippe Grosjean
>>
>>-- 
>>..............................................<?}))><........
>>  ) ) ) ) )
>>( ( ( ( (    Prof. Philippe Grosjean
>>  ) ) ) ) )
>>( ( ( ( (    Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
>>  ) ) ) ) )   Mons-Hainaut University, Belgium
>>( ( ( ( ( 
>>..............................................................
>>
>>______________________________________________
>>R-devel at r-project.org mailing list 
>>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
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[Rd] commercial software selling a R module - question about GPL license rights
Philippe Grosjean