From andy_liaw at merck.com  Wed Apr 19 19:51:36 2006
From: andy_liaw at merck.com (Liaw, Andy)
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 13:51:36 -0400
Subject: [Rd] commercial software selling a R module - question about
 GPL license rights
Message-ID: <39B6DDB9048D0F4DAD42CB26AAFF0AFAFEDADA@usctmx1106.merck.com>

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
> ( ( ( ( ( 
> ..............................................................
> 
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> 
>



[Rd] commercial software selling a R module - question about GPL license rights
Liaw, Andy