[R] "license" for a university

Barry Rowlingson b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk
Thu Sep 4 09:41:52 CEST 2008


2008/9/4 Ted Byers <r.ted.byers at gmail.com>:
>
> Erin,
>
> I trust you know what you risk when you assume.  ;-)
>
> There IS a license, but it basically lets you copy or distribute it, or, in
> your case, install on as many machines as you wish.  It is the "GNU GENERAL
> PUBLIC LICENSE".
>
> Like most open source software I use, the Gnu license is in place primarly
> to ensure everyone can freely use it.
>

 Yes, there's no licence that covers usage - the GNU GPL covers
copying, modification, and distribution only. Unlike certain
statistical software's end-user licence agreement (EULA), someone who
double-clicks an R icon and starts typing doesn't have to agree to
anything. In practice, the person doing the classroom install of Other
Stats Package will have clicked through the EULA and the users will
never have seen the licence they are supposedly licensed under. Great.

There's no EULA for R.

 Barry

[practising the UK English practice of 'license' for a verb and
'licence' for a noun - I was advised this was good advice...]



More information about the R-help mailing list