License of pbdR project
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Dale Wang
Dec 9, 2014, 9:04:11 PM12/9/14
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Hi developers of pbdR,
Sorry to bother you about the license problem.
These days I am on a project in our lab which is intended to be open sourced under Apache License. I find pbdR is very useful and meets our demand. I want to use pbdR's code(mainly pbdDEMO and pbdDMAT) in our project. My boss asks me to check the license of pbdR to find out whether pbdR's code is compatible with Apache License. Therefore I start to collect info and find three different statements on the license problem of pbdR project:
1.one statement is from CRAN's page : GPL-2 | GPL-3 [expanded from: GPL (≥ 2)]
2.another statement is from the pbdR tutorial slides "pbdR: Programming with Big Data in R"(http://rbigdata.github.io/user2014/pbdr.pdf?raw=true) page 31: "MPL, BSP and GPL licensed".
3.the third statement is from pbdR's github repo(pbdDEMO's repo): it includes a COPYING license file of GPL.
I am a little confused about the license of pbdR project. Can we integrate pbdR's code in our project with a Apache complitable License (like BSD license)?
Thank you very much for your reply.
Best wishes,
Dale(Zhaokang) Wang
Sorry to bother you about the license problem.
These days I am on a project in our lab which is intended to be open sourced under Apache License. I find pbdR is very useful and meets our demand. I want to use pbdR's code(mainly pbdDEMO and pbdDMAT) in our project. My boss asks me to check the license of pbdR to find out whether pbdR's code is compatible with Apache License. Therefore I start to collect info and find three different statements on the license problem of pbdR project:
1.one statement is from CRAN's page : GPL-2 | GPL-3 [expanded from: GPL (≥ 2)]
2.another statement is from the pbdR tutorial slides "pbdR: Programming with Big Data in R"(http://rbigdata.github.io/user2014/pbdr.pdf?raw=true) page 31: "MPL, BSP and GPL licensed".
3.the third statement is from pbdR's github repo(pbdDEMO's repo): it includes a COPYING license file of GPL.
I am a little confused about the license of pbdR project. Can we integrate pbdR's code in our project with a Apache complitable License (like BSD license)?
Thank you very much for your reply.
Best wishes,
Dale(Zhaokang) Wang
wrathematics
Dec 9, 2014, 9:43:57 PM12/9/14
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Hi Dale,
I am not a lawyer, and the following is not legal advice.
It's kind of complicated, and depends on what you really mean by "compatible". In the sense described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility then the licenses are compatible.
As for the packages, pbdDMAT (and possibly pbdDEMO; I don't remember) contain small amounts of modified code from R itself, and so they retain the GPL >= 2 licensing.
pbdNCDF4 is a derivative work (in the copyright sense) of a GPL >= 3 package, and so is licensed under GPL >= 3.
pbdSLAP, pbdBASE, pbdMPI, pbdPROF, and pbdADIOS are licensed under MPL 2.0.
pbdPAPI is licensed under the 3-clause BSD license.
All of these licenses are compatible in the sense that they may legally be combined into a single work. The license of the combined work, as I understand, still depends on who you ask. The FSF would probably say it would be GPL, but I suspect they would make that argument for almost any R extension, and certainly any which uses compiled code (see their opinion on interpreted languages https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL). I have read opinions of other lawyers who have broader interpretations; and indeed, I believe that commercial enterprises such as Revolution Analytics could not exist if the FSF's opinion were completely accurate. But as I understand, this issue has never been taken to court, so I don't think anyone really knows.
Best
-Drew
I am not a lawyer, and the following is not legal advice.
It's kind of complicated, and depends on what you really mean by "compatible". In the sense described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility then the licenses are compatible.
As for the packages, pbdDMAT (and possibly pbdDEMO; I don't remember) contain small amounts of modified code from R itself, and so they retain the GPL >= 2 licensing.
pbdNCDF4 is a derivative work (in the copyright sense) of a GPL >= 3 package, and so is licensed under GPL >= 3.
pbdSLAP, pbdBASE, pbdMPI, pbdPROF, and pbdADIOS are licensed under MPL 2.0.
pbdPAPI is licensed under the 3-clause BSD license.
All of these licenses are compatible in the sense that they may legally be combined into a single work. The license of the combined work, as I understand, still depends on who you ask. The FSF would probably say it would be GPL, but I suspect they would make that argument for almost any R extension, and certainly any which uses compiled code (see their opinion on interpreted languages https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL). I have read opinions of other lawyers who have broader interpretations; and indeed, I believe that commercial enterprises such as Revolution Analytics could not exist if the FSF's opinion were completely accurate. But as I understand, this issue has never been taken to court, so I don't think anyone really knows.
Best
-Drew
--
Programming with Big Data in R
Simplifying Scalability
http://r-pbd.org/
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Dale Wang
Dec 10, 2014, 7:31:36 AM12/10/14
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Thank you very much for your prompt response, Drew!
Your explaination is very detailed and clear. I get all I need and even know more on open source license problem, thank you again.
Now I know the situation. Your reply will be helpful to other new-coming people who want to use pbdR in their work.
Wish you have a happy day,
Dale
在 2014年12月10日星期三UTC+8上午10时43分57秒，Drew Schmidt写道：
Your explaination is very detailed and clear. I get all I need and even know more on open source license problem, thank you again.
Now I know the situation. Your reply will be helpful to other new-coming people who want to use pbdR in their work.
Wish you have a happy day,
Dale
在 2014年12月10日星期三UTC+8上午10时43分57秒，Drew Schmidt写道：
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbigdataprogramming+unsub...@googlegroups.com.
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