[R] Legality Question about R's Open Source GNU GPL License

zerfetzen zerfetzen at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 28 22:03:46 CEST 2008


Thanks to each of you for your excellent input.  I have copied the file and
will read it tonight.  I haven't run into any heat from IT, but if I do, it
will be in the near future.  The exact legal issue was touched upon.  There
was a concern that anything associated with R (my code, etc.) would have to
be made public, legally, if demanded.  I thought that was absurd.  Before I
came to this company a few years ago, I interviewed at Amazon.com in
Seattle, and in that interview, it was explained to me that their entire
computer network, at least as far as I would be concerned, was all Linux. 
Well, that's open source as well.  But of course there could be fine legal
differences.

Gnu.org said the same thing, under its FAQ, that there is no legal risk to
use it at work, in the sense that you'd have to divulge anything.  It even
said you could modify source code and use it at work.  No problems.  But,
like was said, there could be a problem if you distribute it.

But I'm just a simple user, looking for a much better range of statistical,
mathematical, and optimization methods than SAS STAT and SAS ETS offer.  For
me, I will slowly try to convert my SAS code at work to R script.  I've seen
the light.  Cheers and thanks for the good feedback.
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