Does someone know how does this work with regards to the GPL? I have heard that they have a complete reimplementation of R. Really? What about all of the GPL'ed packages at CRAN, do they just not ship those?
I also know that the R developers don't really enforce the GPL. Is that what's going on here?
If they ship their own from-scratch-not-using-any-third-party-code implementation, they are fine
If they are shipping a GPL version of R, then this is a legal grey area, with different opinions from differing lawyers, mostly on whether it's a derivative work covered by the GPL or not.
It's honestly, not worth getting into the whole discussion, because there are no lights at the end of the tunnel, only opinions on all sides that are usually supported by reasonable arguments.
I'm surprised that no one in this thread (or on the broader Internet, as far as I can tell from a cursory web search) has any information the status of this "Revolution R" package that Microsoft recently acquired.
Is it a clean-room reimplementation of R? (like the relationship between .NET and Mono) Or is it a "distribution" of R? (like the relationship between Debian and Ubuntu?)
Whether the R implementation here is non-GPL, or whether it actually is running in a "fork-and-exec" separate process, I'm sure that Microsoft has their bases covered. They know more than a thing or two about software licensing, and certainly wouldn't take any risks of subjecting their flagship enterprise database to the GPL.
However, I'm completely uncertain as to what the legal status of Microsoft's R implementation means in terms of libraries that one can use from CRAN (aren't many of those GPL'ed as well?).
For me, I work in the real world, where you're not allowed to touch the GPL with a 10-foot pole, so this is of idle curiosity only. I'm not sure if Microsoft is trying to appeal to academia here, or if it's just a P.R. move in general... but if they expect to sell this to business users, then they're going to have to put a LOT more effort into clarifying its legal status.
I must work in the imaginary world, since we are allowed to use GPL'ed stuff at work. In fact, I got hired at my current job to improve GPL'ed stuff. And I don't work in academia.
Whenever I hear stories about how big companies can't touch the GPL, I always call "bullshit". Of course they can; and in fact many large companies do. Some, sadly, are just full of inefficient bureaucracy that feeds their employees big fat lies about how the GPL will destroy us all.
According to [1] R "will be run inside a sandbox process within SQL Server itself". If that's correct then there's not much to it. MS includes a link somewhere saying "Go here for the R source code."
As far as CRAN goes, the licenses of the packages there have nothing to do with the license of the R implementations they run on. Even if MS has their own implementation of R, it should be able to download and run packages from CRAN without MS having to worry about it.
Basically, if you can function call into R from SQL/etc, and it's just not just a subprocess completely independent, their view is that you'd have to GPL the main process.
My interpretation was that SQL Server would be more or less forking an R process and passing it the script as an argument. It seems hard to believe that would be forbidden by the GPL.
That's a very strict position to take. So using a GPL'd library in my code means my code is now GPL as well? I understand now why many companies blanket ban GPL software.
Is it? If I go and download the unreal engine to build a game, I got to pay 5% of gross revenue for using that in a commercially sold game. If I go to Flickr and download some pictures, I often got to pay the photographer for including it in commercial products.
GPL like any other software licenses defines the terms when authorization is granted, and instead of asking money it only request that you share and share alike the source code. Some people find that to be a fair concept, while others prefer to spend money and time to create their own implementation. Depending on the level of market competition, business models, and revenue streams reimplementing existing software can be valid but in most times its not.
It's not very strict; it's the raison d'être of the GPL. The LGPL was written precisely to allow libraries without copyleft. A big chunk of CRAN is library-based and depends on a binary interface to R, and is GPL'ed.
The FSF also does not think that whether the GPL'ed program is a separate process or not determines whether the bundle as a whole is GPL'ed or not. In their opinion, if you bundle the whole thing and it acts as a whole, and the communication between the GPL'ed components and the non-free parts are "intimate enough"[1], then the whole bundle is copylefted. It seems to me that bundling R with SQL server and tightly coupling the two, even across different processes, could well qualify.
Of course, if the R developers do not want to enforce their copyleft, none of this matters.
I also know that the R developers don't really enforce the GPL. Is that what's going on here?