contributed code - copyright: An Apology

[BAKERWL at UWYO.EDU]

>I've contributed some code to grass (the r.le programs) not in an
>official release, but via the grass/incoming directory on the moon.
>There is a request in one of the README files that if the code is used
>that a published article we wrote about the programs be cited.  Recently,
>an article was published in the Journal of Vegetation Science (Vol. 5,
>Issue 5, p. 731-742) that uses GRASS to calculate a number of indices
>of landscape structure (their Table 2).  So far as I am aware, these
>indices cannot be calculated in GRASS without using the r.le programs.
>The authors, however, do not cite our article as requested, but just
>cite GRASS in general.
>
>Short of scientific etiquette, there may be nothing wrong with this,
>and I may even be wrong about interpreting this as anything but an
>oversight.

I sent this message to the list a few days ago, and now must apologize
to the list and to the authors of the article I cited above.

First, it was simply inappropriate to send this message to the list
with the citation included, as I had not first checked with the authors
of this article to verify that this was an instance of use without
citation.  As it turns out, the authors of the article did not use 
the r.le programs.

I came to the mistaken conclusion that the r.le programs were used
without citation because I first missed the citation to SPAN that is
included in the caption to Table 2.  I also assumed that certain other
calculations the authors made using GRASS (calculating a map of distances
from each cell to a particular category, making a moving window map,
and calculating a dominance index) could not have been made without
using the r.le programs.  As it turns out, one of the authors, Dr.
William Hargrove, simply created his own scripts to do part or all of
these calculations in tandem with existing GRASS programs.

I apologize to the authors of this article for falsely attributing a
breach of scientific etiquette, when in fact I was the one in error,
and this false accusation was itself a breach of acceptable conduct.

Sincerely,

Bill Baker
bakerwl at uwyo.edu