repost:contributed code - copyright: clarification needed

[James Darrell McCauley]

"GRASS 4.0" (grass at holstein.age.uiuc.edu) writes on 8 Feb 95:
>references to the spline papers...(I used s.surf.tps
>to interpolate our DEM).  I thought that
>citing GRASS and quoting the program used was enough for

I would suggest:

  Helena Mitasova, Lubos Mitas, Irina Kosinovsky, and
  Dave Gerdes, 1993. s.surf.tps-Software for
  Thin Plate Spline Interpolation and Topographic Analysis.  
  In: GRASS 4.1 Users Manual, Michael Shapiro, Jim 
  Westervelt, D. Gerdes, Marjorie Larson, and Kenneth R. Brownfield
  (eds). US Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory: 
  Champaign, Illinois.

>the purposes of an article.  I can understand wanting
>more direct credit for contributed code, but what about
>the main and alpha programs?

Here's a judgement call IMO. If we're talking about d.vect or g.list,
I'd say just cite the users manual. However, for things like
r.watershed, s.surf.tps, v.autocorr, I would strongly urge giving the
original author credit. To be safe, I'd suggest citing original
authors for anything that you feel is unique about GRASS or any
module/algorithm that plays a critical role in your research.

I have submitted to CERL changes to the GRASS parser (standard command
line interface) that will append author information when usage
instructions are normally given (e.g., 'r.watershed help' would list
Charles E., his organizational affiliation, and maybe even an email
address if he wanted). Look for it in future versions.

--Darrell
James Darrell McCauley, PhD        http://soils.ecn.purdue.edu/~mccauley/
Dept of Agricultural Engineering   mccauley at ecn.purdue.edu
Purdue University                  tel: 317.494.9772 fax: 317.496.1115