To present a contrary view...
To me the commentary so far doesn't seem right -- if I were writing an academic
paper (I personally think this is a good analogy for many R packages) and
elaborating on the ideas of someone else, I would cite their work but I would
not add them as an author to my paper. I would not expect the authors of cited
work to agree with or take responsibility for my work, which is what authorship
(in the publication domain) implies. In the current case there is no reason to
think that the author of matlab code would be informed about or willing to
vouch for the R implementation. Minimally, in an academic setting I would (be
required to) ask whether the individual wished to be an author.
Conversely, if an author were to have made a substantive contribution to my
package, and objected to the content of the package with their name on it, I
would feel obliged to respect their wishes and, e.g., withdraw or, if permitted
by licensing, revise or re-publish the paper / package without the author. This
makes me think carefully about who actually contributed to the package, rather
than merely whose prior work my package builds upon.
Of course it is necessary to obey licensing terms of the prior work, and
important to acknowledge, above and beyond the specific licensing terms, the
contributions individuals make.
Martin Morgan
On 6/2/20, 5:57 AM, "R-package-devel on behalf of Adelchi Azzalini"
<r-package-devel-boun...@r-project.org on behalf of azzal...@stat.unipd.it>
wrote:
The point in question does not refer to copying code, but to code
translation.
Does this make any difference?
This was the question which I raised.
The phrase "As the code is part of the package now," does not seem to apply
in this case,
since the code is actually not there.
Also, if the authors of the original code (in Matlab) must be included in
the Authors@R
block of the DESCRIPTION file, should they be labelled as "aut", "cbt", or
what?
Apart from the specific instance which my earlier question was referring
to,
the view "As the code is part of the package now, therese are of course now
also copyright
holders and authors of your package" opens another question, closely
related but different,
as it refers to code which is included, not translated.
The above-quoted sentence appears to say that anyone who has written any
portion of code is an author of the package. In this view, who must be
labelled "cbt" then?
Best regards
Adelchi
> On 2 Jun 2020, at 01:25, Uwe Ligges <lig...@statistik.tu-dortmund.de>
wrote:
>
> If you copy code, you have to make sure that you can use it under the
currrent license of your package, and you have to make sure to declare copright
holders and authors. As the code is part of the package now, therese are of
course now also copyright holders and authors of your package.
>
> Best,
> Uwe Ligges
>
> On 01.06.2020 23:37, R. Mark Sharp wrote:
>> Adelchi,
>> I have a similar situation where I had made all of the typical academic
references within the code and documentation for a small but important function
my package uses. I was asked by the CRAN reviewers to add the author of that
function to the DESCRIPTION Authors@R section. I added the following:
>> person("Terry", "Therneau", role = c("aut”))
>> Mark
>> R. Mark Sharp, Ph.D.
>> Data Scientist and Biomedical Statistical Consultant
>> 7526 Meadow Green St.
>> San Antonio, TX 78251
>> mobile: 210-218-2868
>> rmsh...@me.com
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>> From: Adelchi Azzalini <azzal...@stat.unipd.it>
>>> Subject: [R] a question of etiquette
>>> Date: June 1, 2020 at 11:34:00 AM CDT
>>> To: r-h...@r-project.org
>>>
>>> The new version of a package which I maintain will include a new
function which I have ported to R from Matlab.
>>> The documentation of this R function indicates the authors of the
original Matlab code, reference to their paper, URL of the source code.
>>>
>>> Question: is this adequate, or should I include them as co-authors of
the package, or as contributors, or what else?
>>> Is there a general policy about this matter?
>>>
>>> Adelchi Azzalini
>>> http://azzalini.stat.unipd.it/
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> r-h...@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>> ______________________________________________
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>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
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