I had similar thoughts initially, but this area is governed by copyright, not
academic authorship conventions. So
(a) There is no real parallel to "citation rights" when it comes to software.
If you use someone else's code, then it is very hard to avoid derived-works
rules applying.
(b) Copyright transfers to translated works. This is pretty obvious when it
comes to books, maybe less obvious for computer code, but it certainly wouldn't
make sense if translation to machine language rendered copyright inapplicable.
You cannot copyright ideas only their expression, but the question was
explicitly about translation from Matlab to R.
So, I think the safe way is to include the original authors in the author list
(and check their license carefully).
-pd
> On 2 Jun 2020, at 15:17 , Martin Morgan <mtmorgan.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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]]
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>
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--
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Office: A 4.23
Email: pd....@cbs.dk Priv: pda...@gmail.com
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