Re: [Haskell] Haskell Weekly News: March 12, 2007
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 the code is previously unpublished) then perhaps you are assigning the copyright of it.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.
Quoth Conrad Parker, nevermore,
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.
I'm glad some people agree. I've been reading the reddit comments for that blog post with a mixture of car-crash fascination and horror, where the prevailing opinions are a mixture of: * computer scientists can't program, duh! * computer scientists aren't in academia for the advancement of knowledge, it's all about getting their name known * you just want to ride on the coat-tails of other people's brilliance; or, you're too lazy/stupid to do the work yourself * if you can't recreate it from the description in the paper then it shouldn't have been published The final point is the only one with any merit at all, and only then in an ideal world. High level papers are not simple to translate into code, even if the resulting code is quite simple. (How long did it take for the monad to make it into programming?) It's sad that there's such a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism even in computer science/software engineering. So I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all the exciting academic work that gets published with code that I can read (even better when they are mixed in one literate document). And also all those contributors to The Monad Reader, who help to bridge that gap for the rest of us. Cheers, D. -- Dougal Stanton
ithika:
Quoth Conrad Parker, nevermore,
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.
I'm glad some people agree. I've been reading the reddit comments for that blog post with a mixture of car-crash fascination and horror, where the prevailing opinions are a mixture of:
* computer scientists can't program, duh! * computer scientists aren't in academia for the advancement of knowledge, it's all about getting their name known * you just want to ride on the coat-tails of other people's brilliance; or, you're too lazy/stupid to do the work yourself * if you can't recreate it from the description in the paper then it shouldn't have been published
The final point is the only one with any merit at all, and only then in an ideal world. High level papers are not simple to translate into code, even if the resulting code is quite simple. (How long did it take for the monad to make it into programming?)
It's sad that there's such a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism even in computer science/software engineering. So I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all the exciting academic work that gets published with code that I can read (even better when they are mixed in one literate document). And also all those contributors to The Monad Reader, who help to bridge that gap for the rest of us.
I too read the comments with a sense of frustration. It is encouraging, somewhat, that in the original article, the Haskell paper-writing community was actually singled out as one that does tend to operate in an open source manner, and to actually produce code. Free the lambdas! -- Don
One of my editors at somepoint, told me that he had asked his lawyers
about this (i.e. don't think this is anything like real legal advice),
and the answer was 'If you publish an article and advise someone that
the way to do something is X, no judge will be happy if you sue them
for taking your advice. '
So my editors advice was, if you want to keep it a secret, don't publish.
My take, if the code isn't published, it's advertising, not research.
On 3/13/07, Donald Bruce Stewart
ithika:
Quoth Conrad Parker, nevermore,
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.
I'm glad some people agree. I've been reading the reddit comments for that blog post with a mixture of car-crash fascination and horror, where the prevailing opinions are a mixture of:
* computer scientists can't program, duh! * computer scientists aren't in academia for the advancement of knowledge, it's all about getting their name known * you just want to ride on the coat-tails of other people's brilliance; or, you're too lazy/stupid to do the work yourself * if you can't recreate it from the description in the paper then it shouldn't have been published
The final point is the only one with any merit at all, and only then in an ideal world. High level papers are not simple to translate into code, even if the resulting code is quite simple. (How long did it take for the monad to make it into programming?)
It's sad that there's such a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism even in computer science/software engineering. So I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all the exciting academic work that gets published with code that I can read (even better when they are mixed in one literate document). And also all those contributors to The Monad Reader, who help to bridge that gap for the rest of us.
I too read the comments with a sense of frustration.
It is encouraging, somewhat, that in the original article, the Haskell paper-writing community was actually singled out as one that does tend to operate in an open source manner, and to actually produce code.
Free the lambdas!
-- Don _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
participants (4)
-
Conrad Parker -
dons＠cse.unsw.edu.au -
Dougal Stanton -
Steve Downey