Citation notice and funding for development - your feedback is needed

[Ole Tange]

I have spent several man years on GNU Parallel. One of the things that
helps fund this is me having a job. One of the things that helps me
having a job is if my article on GNU Parallel is cited. The more
citations the easier it is for me to find a job that allows for
further development.

GNU Parallel is used by more and more people for processing data that
ends up in publications. That is good. But I have discovered that most
of the time they forget to cite my article; which is bad. The problem
seems to be that GNU Parallel is so easy to install and use that they
never look at: The website, the manual, the --version, the --help, or
the tutorial.

Citations are primarily relevant in academia and research institutes,
so the optimal would be if users in these organisations were reminded
about the citation while everyone else is unaffected.

The best idea I have come up with so far is printing a citation notice
on STDERR if output is to a terminal when GNU Parallel starts. The
notice will not be printed if STDERR is redirected (to a pipe or a
file), it will also not be printed if --no-notice is given and it can
be disabled completely by running --bibtex once:

"""
When using GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU Parallel - The Command-Line Power Tool,
;login: The USENIX Magazine, February 2011:42-47.

This helps funding further development.

To get rid of this notice run 'parallel --bibtex' once or use '--no-notice'.
"""

Running --bibtex would print:

"""
When using GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

@article{Tange2011a,
 title = {GNU Parallel - The Command-Line Power Tool},
 author = {O. Tange},
 address = {Frederiksberg, Denmark},
 journal = {;login: The USENIX Magazine},
 month = {Feb},
 number = {1},
 volume = {36},
 url = {http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel},
 year = {2011},
 pages = {42-47}
}

This helps funding further development.

Type: "will cite" and press enter.
> _

Thank you for your support. It is much appreciated. The citation
notice is now disabled.
"""

When the user has entered 'will cite', it will create a file to avoid
future notices. --no-notice will also hide the notice.

Do you have ideas for improving the idea? Do you see problems with the idea?

Are there better options for getting to the goal?


/Ole