[R] What is R?

James Edward Marca jmarca at translab.its.uci.edu
Thu Feb 8 21:58:24 CET 2001


It seems to me that your question can only be answered by the
various copyright holders listed in the file COPYRIGHTS.

In my opinion, if it is GPLed, it is GPLed.  While 
your comments point out inconsistencies between common usage of
open source and free software with the more technical usage,
frankly I think your message is just stirring up trouble.
It is clear that the GPL is the GPL.  Your message addresses
the documentation describing that license.  

There are plenty of holy wars splitting these hairs.  I don't think
we need one to start here.

james

>From Diego Kuonen, received Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 08:01:46PM +0100:
> Dear all
> 
> there's something. that puzzles me about what R is :-)
> 
>    "R is available as Free Software under the terms of the Free 
>     Software Foundation's GNU General Public License in source 
>     code form."
> 
> (Source: http://www.r-project.org/about.html)
> 
> But, looking at the second paragraph of the same site, you
> see this:
> 
>    "... and R provides an Open Source route to participation in
>     that activity."
> 
> As we all know the term "open source" means something close 
> (but not identical) to "free software". 
> 
> So, what is R?
> 
> It clearly seems to be "free software" and not only "open source" 
> software, or?
> 
> 
> Finally, Let's have a look at the following:
> 
>    "... This article describes why using the term ``open source'' does 
>     not solve any problems, and in fact creates some. These are the reasons 
>     why it is better to stick with ``free software.'' ... "
> 
> (Source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html )
> 
> 
> I'm puzzled, are you?
> 
> 
> Greets
> 
>   Diego
> 
> 
> P.S.: What about "Omegahat"?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Diego Kuonen $\in$ Chairs of Statistics $\subset$ DMA \@ EPFL
> http://stat.kuonen.com                  http://www.Statoo.com 
> Q: How do I type "for i in *.dvi; do xdvi $i; done" in a GUI?  
> /*      panic("esp: Aiee penguin on the SCSI-bus.");       */
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