Re: The --citation changed to refer to a book in a recent release

[Ole Tange]

On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 2:41 PM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
<avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 11:35 AM Ole Tange <ole@tange.dk> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 9:56 AM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > The --citation output now refers to a book instead of the website /
> > > documentation itself:
> >
> > No. It refers to the 2018-book instead of the article from 2011.
> > Citation has never referred to neither the website nor the included
> > documentation.
>
> I see that now on closer inspection. The URL though was at least to
> the official website, i.e. the logical place for "I used this tool",
> now it's a URL for a book I have not and don't plan to read. So I'd
> never cite it for anything.

If you see how other tools prefer to be cited, it is in general _not_
their website:

* https://www.scipy.org/citing.html
* https://octave.org/doc/interpreter/Citing-Octave-in-Publications.html
  (Octave has citation for individual packages, too)
* https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2008-May/161481.html
* https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/utils/html/citation.html
  (R has citation for individual packages, too)
* http://www.partek.com/citing-partek-software-in-a-publication/
* http://www.fluortools.com/misc/cite
* https://www.maxqda.com/how-to-cite-maxqda
* https://www.open-mpi.org/papers/
* https://www.tensorflow.org/about/bib
* http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/paul/praat.html

I do not think it is in the spirit of academic tradition to refuse to
cite a source, just because you got the information through a
different channel. Also I find it a bit unfair to punish GNU Parallel
for being so easy to use that you do not have to read either to get
going. It seems to set the wrong incentives: Make the tool so hard to
use that the user _has_ to read a specific part of the documentation
to get going.

If you like GNU Parallel and want to help funding it in the future I
encourage you to cite the article or the book - even if you have not
read either (opposite many articles both are available for free online
so you do not need to have a physical copy to read them -
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014 and
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/105438-Tange.pdf).


/Ole