[Rcpp-devel] Review request: Sandboxed R integration via RInside

Thu Nov 20 16:25:40 CET 2014

I never distributed my work and don't now.

Dale Smith, Ph.D.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Dirk Eddelbuettel [mailto:edd at debian.org] 
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 10:14 AM
To: Smith, Dale (Norcross)
Cc: Dirk Eddelbuettel; Christian Authmann; rcpp-devel at r-forge.wu-wien.ac.at
Subject: RE: [Rcpp-devel] Review request: Sandboxed R integration via RInside

On 20 November 2014 at 14:28, Smith, Dale (Norcross) wrote:
| I've always had licensing concerns with RInside. I preferred Rserve and it worked well for our purposes years ago.
| 
| This new code sounds like it is more flexible than Rserve and deserves to be a separate package, not in RInside. But that's a personal preference to avoid the *appearance* of licensing concerns.

This is probably not the list on which we should have licensing discussions which get very hated easily, and we don't really have any real experts here (whereas the debian-legal list may be a more appropriate place which at times had fruitful discussions and outcomes, I am sure there are many others).

But I would nevertheless remind everybody that
 * R itself is GPL-2,
 * Rcpp/RInside are also GPL-2
 * everything that _links_ to GPL code them becomes GPL in the aggregate which seems generally indisputed.  

So I never saw a point in having Rcpp's (or RInside's) licensing be different from R's as Rcpp becomes a (small part) of the much larger "thing" that is your R session. And the coupling is tight. 

By being GPL-2 in the aggregate, once you _distribute_ your work you need to make code available.  To me (very personally speaking) that is still a very good contract as I'd like to see the work other people do on top of the commons we all contribute too.  

Dale, one could argue that by using Rserve you are doing licesing arbitrage.
That is the whole GPL-2 / GPL-3 / AGPL debate.  I concede that it has a valid (and probably very important) point, but I never got that interested in it as I clearly work more with direct linking and the GPL-2 implications.  Which I am perfectly happy with.  I use(d) Rserve mostly to avoid build-time limitations (ie cooperating with a non-Linux world).

Hope that didn't offend anybody.  As I said, I'd prefer if we discussed code, usage, development, ... around Rcpp et al here and leave these legal eagle offshoots for another time and place.  

Dirk

| 
| Dale Smith, Ph.D.
| Senior Financial Quantitative Analyst
| Financial & Risk Management Solutions
| Fiserv
| Office: 678-375-5315
| www.fiserv.com
| 
| FORTUNE® Magazine's 2014 World's Most Admired Companies
| Facebook: Like Fiserv  ·  Twitter: Follow @Fiserv  ·  LinkedIn: 
| Connect Fiserv  .  Careers: Join Fiserv
| 
| Fiserv What's Next NowSM Campaign
| 
| -----Original Message-----
| From: rcpp-devel-bounces at r-forge.wu-wien.ac.at 
| [mailto:rcpp-devel-bounces at r-forge.wu-wien.ac.at] On Behalf Of Dirk 
| Eddelbuettel
| Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 9:14 AM
| To: Christian Authmann
| Cc: rcpp-devel at r-forge.wu-wien.ac.at
| Subject: Re: [Rcpp-devel] Review request: Sandboxed R integration via 
| RInside
| 
| 
| On 20 November 2014 at 14:58, Christian Authmann wrote:
| | Hello,
| | 
| | I've developed a solution to integrate R into an application in a 
| | safer way than the direct integration provided by RInside. It is 
| | conceptually similar to RServe: the application does not link to R, 
| | but communicates with a different process where R is running. 
| | Securing the separate process is much easier.
| | 
| | Unlike RServe, my solution has the full power of Rcpp/RInside: one 
| | can communicate custom data types, and one can even allow the R code 
| | to call back into provided C++ functions.
| | 
| | I've made a pull request, but the code is complex enough to need a 
| | few more eyes before merging. Please read and comment, either on 
| | github or via email!
| 
| Given that I saw it first via the pull request, I started commented at the pull request and wrote (after two more edits):
| 
|    About to leave town for a few days of workshopping so may not get to it "soon".
| 
|    Couple of really quick first comments:
| 
|    * Keeping it in examples/ is a good idea, it won't break anything
|    * On the other hand, "nobody sees it" that way. Just for argument's sake,
|      should it be a separate project? "RProccessInside" or "RInside2" or
|      something? Or move up into RInside? 
|    * All my code (or at least the code that matters) is GPL-2. If you stick
|      it in here, I am not sure your BSD headers matter. It may just became
|      GPL-2 as the whole aggregate does anyway as all of R, Rcpp and RInside
|      are GPL-2 so why not make matters simpler and convert this to GPL-2 as
|      well? 
| 
|   All that said, I do of course love a nice and well put-together pull
|   request. And as it does not harm, I'm happy to take it. I was just
|   wondering how to best give it more exposure... 
| 
| We can keep the discussion "here" or "there" -- whatever works best.  Maybe "conceptual" comments here and code nitpicking on GH?
| 
| RInside "plus forking a la RServe plus process separation" is a potentially rather useful idea.  Nice work!
| 
| Dirk
|  
| | If you cannot comment on the code, but think this could be useful 
| | for you, please let me know.
| | 
| | https://github.com/eddelbuettel/rinside/pull/8
| | 
| | 
| | Thanks!
| | Christian
| | --
| | Christian Authmann
| | Philipps-Universität Marburg
| | Fachbereich Mathematik und Informatik AG Datenbanksysteme 
| | Hans-Meerwein-Straße
| | D-35032 Marburg
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