I would post this as a response to the recent thread "Citation requirement and the GPL” but as a new list member I am not sure how to do that.
There seems to be very mixed messages on the other thread. First, parallel is licensed under the GPL. But on the other hand, it is clearly viewed as unacceptable to use parallel as part of the work of a paper without citing it. The tone of the messages does not suggest it is optional. Indeed one is asked not to use parallel if one doesn’t cite it in scientific work it was used for. So please can we have some clarity: Is parallel licensed under GPL or not? If it is, then please stop giving the impression that it is a *requirement* to cite it when used in a scientific paper. That is not how a licence like GPL works. The point of the GPL is that it makes the software “free” with certain restrictions given by the licence, which (as pointed out under the other thread) explicitly exclude requiring citation. If it is not licensed under GPL, then of course that’s fine except that future versions should remove the GPL licence. If the answer is that it is licensed under GPL then request to cite is just that, a request. The wording of some of the recent discussion does not give that impression, so I would highly recommend clarifying this. E.g. the text "If you pay 10000 EUR you should feel free to use GNU Parallel without citing” is misleading if it is only a request. For clarity, you might think it is scientific misconduct not to cite parallel, but that is an entirely separate point. We can have discussions about that, but it is a completely separate point. For the record, part of my day to day work in academia is trying to increase the amount of software citation, not reduce it. -- Ian Gent School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, UK, KY16 9SX http://ian.gent +44 1334 463247. [email protected] The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland : No SC013532
