[R] How can you buy R?

[Deepayan Sarkar]

On 5/23/06, Berwin A Turlach <berwin at maths.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
> G'day Deepayan,
>
> >>>>> "DS" == Deepayan Sarkar <deepayan.sarkar at gmail.com> writes:
>
>     DS> I think you are still missing the point.  [...]

> Quite possible, as I said early on IANAL.  And these discussion really
> starts to remind me too much of those that I read in
> gnu.misc.discuss.  Since I never participated in them, I don't see why
> I should here.  And that group is probably a better forum to discuss
> all these issues.  If some of the guys who always tried to argue that
> they found a way to circumvent the GPL are still hanging around, I am
> sure they are happy if you come along and confirm that according to
> your understanding of the GPL eveything they are doing is o.k.. :)

[...]

>     DS> The FSF's plan was not to produce a completely independent and
>     DS> fully functional 'GNU system' at once (which would be
>     DS> unrealistic), but rather produce replacements of UNIX tools
>     DS> one by one. It was entirely necessary to allow these new
>     DS> versions to operate within the older, proprietary system.

> Wasn't your argument above, in response to the scenario that I was
> describing, that it is not necessary to explicitly allow this because
> "a user can never violate the GPL"?  As long as you operate on a
> proprietary system and not distributing anything, why would there all
> of a sudden be a problem?

It's not necessary as long as you are only a user. It is necessary
when you want to be more than a user and copy, modify and distribute.
That's the difference between free software and ``Free software'' [1]

[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

In any case, I'm not interested in a technical discussion about the
GPL either, I was only trying to respond to (what in my opinion was)
some misinformation about the GPL. I have no interest in convincing
you personally, and I wouldn't have bothered if this wasn't a public
list. I think I have stated my point of view clearly enough, so I'm
going to stop here.

-Deepayan