Dalibor Topic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > David P Grove wrote: > > The license forces that plus proper academic credit (ie a citation) for > > the benchmark suite, which personally I think is quite fair given how much > > work was put into putting it together (much more than the typical academic > > paper). > > I agree that academic credit is very important. Again, I belive that to > be a part of proper academic conduct, rather than something that needs > to be explicitely enforced in a software license.
All good and well, but who ensures that people obey the principals of good academic conduct? Consider: * The results may be published in a journal, etc whose referees and editors do not understand the importance of citing benchmark suites properly. * The results may be published in an unrefereed report or paper ... or on some random blogger's website. * The results may be published by some person (or company) who is not obliged to follow "academic conduct" principles. Indeed, it is common knowledge that some people/companies are prepared to "cheat" in order to make their product give impressive benchmark results. Furthermore, I'm not convinced the general "principles of good academic conduct" really cover this case. I did a brief google search on academic conduct and citation, and nothing I found covers this case. Nowhere did I find a general requirement to cite the source and version of software used in research, or a particular requirement for benchmarks. IMO, a benchmark suite is a "process for eliciting data" rather than a "source of information". (Note: I'm not saying that one shouldn't cite benchmark software properly. But, IMO, the primary reason is to this is to allow the benchmark results to be independently reproduced.) > Lawyers can't fix bad science. :) In this case, lawyers (or the prospect of lawyers) CAN fix bad science. I'm not saying that there isn't a better alternative than a License agreement. But relying on nebulous "academic conduct principles" that are not enforcable and may not even apply is NOT going to work. -- Steve _______________________________________________ Classpath mailing list Classpath@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/classpath