Re: Citation notice and funding for development - your feedback is needed

[Shlomi Fish]

On Mon, 4 Nov 2013 00:13:22 +0100
Ole Tange <tange@gnu.org> wrote:

> 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'.
> """

One problem I see with that is that (by default at least) it violates the UNIX’s
"Silence is Golden" principle:

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch11s09.html

I.e: people may be annoyed from it, and may also lack the patience to read
everything there, and conclude that the program is annoying (due to the "users
don't read" principle of UI design).

I should note that I violated this for http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/
’s fc-solve executable because people on Windows used to double click the
executable and get an empty command prompt window (because fc-solve was
waiting for standard input). So now:

<<<
shlomif@telaviv1:~$ unset FREECELL_SOLVER_QUIET 
shlomif@telaviv1:~$ fc-solve
Reading the board from the standard input.
Please refer to the documentation for more usage information:
    http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/docs/To cancel this message set the
FREECELL_SOLVER_QUIET environment variable.
>>>

It seems that with GNU parallel however, the reason is less justified and
detracts from its general usability.

Regards,

        Shlomi Fish

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Why I Love Perl - http://shlom.in/joy-of-perl

There is no IGLU Cabal! None of them could pass the Turing test. But strangely
enough a computer program they coded, could.

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