Re: Citation requirement and the GPL

[Christopher Jefferson]

On 26 March 2016 at 20:24, Ole Tange <ole@tange.dk> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 2:17 PM, Christopher Jefferson
> <chris@bubblescope.net> wrote:
>
>> If it is acceptable to ignore the citing requirement,
>
> I have tried to see if I could come up with a scenario where a
> respectable scientist would not cite sources that he used for his
> article - especially when the sources ask to be cited. I have failed
> to come up with a single scenario.
>
> Can you elaborate on the situations in which you believe academia
> would applaud _not_ citing your sources?
>

There are many "nice things" one might want to put in their license,
but the GPL specifically forbids adding extra restrictions.

This has caused me problems in the past, combining GPLed software with
'nauty', a graph isomorphism detector which forbids use by the
military -- a morally nice restriction, but a GPL-incompatible one.

Secondly, one problem with the citing requirement is exactly when it
must be cited (especially as there seems to be the suggestion of a
massive fine is citing does not occur).

Would I cite 'parallel' if it was an integral part of my research
project (for example, a parallelisation project)? Of course! Further,
if I reported times taken I would cite parallel, as it would be an
integral part of recreating those times.

If I used parallel to simply speed up a set of analysis of data? Then
I would not cite it, in the same way I wouldn't cite xargs, grep, cut,
awk and bash, which might be used in the same scripts.

And (I'm afraid) if a project wants citing would have no connection to
if I cited it. Either there is a good scientific reason to cite, or
not.

Chris