On 13/03/07, Wolfgang Jeltsch
Am Montag, 12. März 2007 03:52 schrieb Donald Bruce Stewart:
* [41]Why Publish CS Papers Without Code? 41. http://billmill.org/why_no_code
Interesting!
This leads me to the question how copyright of code fragments included in conference papers is handled. Say, I submit a paper containing some code fragments to the ICFP. I have to assign the copyright of the paper to the ACM. Does this mean that the ACM will hold the copyright of the code fragments? Does this mean that I'm not allowed to publish the source code containing these code fragments as open source software somewhere?
(I am not a lawyer, etc) If your paper simply cites, and quotes from, code that you have already published elsewhere (eg. on your own web site), then I think that would simply count as a citation. If on the other hand your paper contains your code verbatim and doesn't cite it (ie. the code is previously unpublished) then perhaps you are assigning the copyright of it. So it may be a good idea to always make available open source projects before publishing about them in academic papers, and to always include a citation to the open source project web site or tech report. Besides, <tshirt>If it's not open source, it's not computer science</tshirt>. Science demands repeatable results, computer science demands literate programming. The solution is not to shy away from including code, or else the IP lawyers have won, science is banned and we get plunged into another Dark Age. cheers, Conrad.