From simon.urbanek at r-project.org  Tue Oct  6 02:06:58 2015
From: simon.urbanek at r-project.org (Simon Urbanek)
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2015 20:06:58 -0400
Subject: [Rd] authorship and citation
In-Reply-To: <5612FA28.2090607@statistik.tu-dortmund.de>
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	<5612FA28.2090607@statistik.tu-dortmund.de>
Message-ID: <8B5956DE-4D87-4444-BC9D-AF96C04C4F7A@r-project.org>


On Oct 5, 2015, at 6:31 PM, Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 05.10.2015 23:47, Andrew Robinson wrote:
>> As a fourth option, I wonder if the first author could fork the package?
>> 
>> Presumably, appropriately cited, a fork is permitted by the license under
>> which it was released. Then the original package, by both authors, still
>> exists (and a final version could point to the new one) and the new
>> package, citing the previous version appropriately, is by a single author.
> 
> No, copyright remains. You can fork given the license permits it, but there are still the same copyright holders ...
> 

To clarify, legally, you can fork a standard GPL package and make any changes you want, including changing authors fields etc. If you don't own copyright for the entire work then you cannot change the license without consent from the other copyright holders, otherwise you have all the rights as anyone else granted by the license.

However, CRAN policies go beyond that and say

"Where code is copied (or derived) from the work of others (including from R itself), care must be taken that any copyright/license statements are preserved and authorship is not misrepresented.
Preferably, an ?Authors at R? would be used with ?ctb? roles for the authors of such code. Alternatively, the ?Author? field should list these authors as contributors.
Where copyrights are held by an entity other than the package authors, this should preferably be indicated via ?cph? roles in the ?Authors at R? field, or using a ?Copyright? field (if necessary referring to an inst/COPYRIGHTS file)."

This means that CRAN will not accept a package where you did not list all copyright holders in one of the Author roles, although it is legal for you to do so outside of CRAN.

Cheers,
Simon


> Best,
> Uwe Ligges
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> The page of CRAN's policies doesn't seem to touch on forking, presumably
>> because it's out of scope.
>> 
>> Best wishes,
>> 
>> Andrew
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 8:22 AM, Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Simply advice:
>>> 
>>> The former co-author contributed, so he is still author and probably
>>> copyright holder and has to be listed among the authors, otherwise it would
>>> be a CRAN policy violation since even if he does not develop further on, he
>>> developed parts of the so far existing package (if you talk about a CRAN
>>> package).
>>> 
>>> I am not a lawyer, hence I cannot speak for copyright/license stuff in
>>> general, hence my comments only about CRAN policies.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> Uwe Ligges
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 05.10.2015 23:02, Adrian Du?a wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Dear R developers,
>>>> 
>>>> This is a rather peculiar question, but nevertheless I would still need an
>>>> answer for.
>>>> It is about an R package which I created (namely QCA), and from versions
>>>> 1.0-0 to 1.1-4 I had a co-author.
>>>> The co-author recently withdrawn from the package development, but still
>>>> requires to be left in the authors list and be cited for the package in
>>>> the
>>>> CITATION file.
>>>> 
>>>> Obviously, one could not require citations for further developments, but
>>>> don't know how exactly to proceed (I would like to be fair and comply to
>>>> rules).
>>>> 
>>>> I have three options:
>>>> 
>>>> 1. Since the co-author withdrawn from the package development, erase his
>>>> name from the list of authors (but duly recognising his past contribution
>>>> in the package description file)
>>>> 
>>>> 2. Preserve his name in the list of authors (with the comment "up to
>>>> version 1.1-4"), but erasing his name from the citation file
>>>> 
>>>> 3. Keep his name both in the authors list and in the citation file
>>>> indefinitely, even though he doesn't do any development work anymore (I
>>>> have been threatened with a legal process for plagiarism if I did
>>>> otherwise).
>>>> 
>>>> My gut feeling is, since his name is related to the previous versions,
>>>> anyone using those versions would cite him as well, but otherwise I don't
>>>> feel comfortable citing my former co-author for the current work he hasn't
>>>> contributed to.
>>>> 
>>>> At this point, I would really use an advice, as on the other hand I
>>>> wouldn't want to break any regulation I might not be aware of.
>>>> 
>>>> Best wishes,
>>>> Adrian
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel



[Rd] authorship and citation
Simon Urbanek