Re: Citation requirement and the GPL

[Ole Tange]

On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Christopher Jefferson
<chris@bubblescope.net> wrote:
:
> 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.

As the speedup of analysis is a common use case, GNU Parallel
(--citation) mentions this situation in this way:

  When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for
publication please cite: [...]

Do you feel the wording is unclear? If so: What should it say to
convey the message that you should cite when using GNU Parallel for
speeding up of analysis of data?

You do not find similar wording in xargs, grep, cut, awk and bash -
thus no need to cite those. But GNU R has 'citation()' which says:

  We have invested a lot of time and effort in creating R, please cite
it when using it for data analysis.

It should therefore be cited when used for data analysis - even if you
could have used another tool to do the same. The same goes for Numpy
(citation as per http://www.scipy.org/citing.html) and Python.

As mentioned in --citation you should feel free to use
\nocite{Tange2011a} - in other words: Your article does not have to
mention GNU Parallel, as long as it is in the list of references.

If you prefer not to cite GNU Parallel at all, then please refrain
from using GNU Parallel.

The reason for citations is covered in length in:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/parallel/2013-11/msg00006.html


/Ole