[R] Licensing question

[David Coppit]

Hi everyone,

I'm investigating the possibility of calling R directly from Java using the
Omegahat RSJava package (http://www.omegahat.org/RSJava/). RSJava is LGPL,
but R is GPL. As I understand it, RSJava talks to R via dynamic linking,
which the FSF considers to be derivative work under the terms of the GPL. So
even though RSJava itself is LGPL, my code must be distributed under the GPL
if it calls R via RSJava.

First, is my analysis correct AFAYK? Is there any chance of the R community
cross-licensing the code as LGPL to companies that wish to use it in this
way? Or are we stuck having to create input files and exec'ing the Rterm.exe
application? (We can save perhaps 30% of our R execution time if we can
avoid having to read and write input and output data files for R.)

Thanks,
David