On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 8:19 PM, Spencer Graves < spencer.gra...@structuremonitoring.com> wrote:
> Hi, Dominick, et al.: > > > I know nothing about about Rcpp, it's history and the contributions of > Dominick and anyone else. I think everyone should be appropriately > recognized for their contributions. > > > However, I feel compelled to briefly outline personal experiences with > collaborators who were so concerned that their contribution be properly > recognized that it limited our success. To successfully commercialize the > ideas, we needed the collaboration of others. However, my collaborators' > excessive concern about getting "their share" made it exceedingly and > unreasonably difficult to obtain the extra help we needed. > > > A famous example of this was the Wright Brothers. They invented the > airplane and spent much of the rest of their lives trying to defend their > patent. Wilbur was dead long before it was settled, and Orville got so > little from it that it was clearly a massive waste of their time. Moreover, > "The legal threat suppressed development of the U.S. aviation industry." ( > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wright_brothers_patent_war) > > > I sincerely hope that this present discussion can be settled in a way > that does not damage the incredibly productive collaboration that has made R > the overwhelming success it is. The future of humanity is brighter because > R makes it easier (a) for scientists to better understand the things they > study and (b) for common people to better understand and manage the problems > they face. > Nicely said, and I agree. I think I made it clear in my original post that this has nothing to do with patents or intellectual property rights. Under GPL there are none. This does not mean that I do not value GPL, but we shouldn't let the pursuit of free software turn us into "gadgets". Thanks, Dominick > > Best Wishes, > Spencer Graves > > > > On 12/1/2010 4:20 PM, Dominick Samperi wrote: > >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Gabor Grothendieck >> <ggrothendi...@gmail.com>wrote: >> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Hadley Wickham<had...@rice.edu> wrote: >>> >>>> Perhaps a wider community of R users can weigh in on a >>>>> policy decision that was implicitly deemed acceptable on this >>>>> thread. Namely, that it is fine to arbitrarily and >>>>> for no reason deprecate the contributions of past >>>>> authors, and as more progress is made, even more >>>>> disparaging remarks can be added. >>>>> >>>> What is disparaging about saying "a small portion of the code is based >>>> on code written during 2005 and 2006 by Dominick Samperi"? I read this >>>> as a factual statement saying that the current version of Rcpp is >>>> based on, in a small way, your earlier work. >>>> >>>> For reference, a disparaging comment would be something like: "This >>>> package was based code written by Hadley Wickham that made my eyes >>>> bleed", or "The development of this package was driven by the godawful >>>> code that Hadley wrote". >>>> >>>> >>> Its very difficult to truly assess relative contributions when you mix >>> in design, coding, level of effort, promotion, etc. I would not >>> focus on the single word "disparaging". I think the poster simply >>> used the wrong word and perhaps what he meant was more along the lines >>> of: as the creator of the package he presumably set the design (or >>> significant elements of the design) for all subsequent work and in >>> that respect even if its true that the number of lines he generated is >>> relatively small compared to the current package, that phrase gives >>> the misleading impression that his contribution was also small. There >>> is a difference between something that is true and non-misleading and >>> something that is true and misleading. >>> >>> There is an important element of this discussion that is being >> overlooked, >> namely, the timing. If indeed my contributions were minimal (and they >> were not for the reasons you suggest) then why was it decided now, >> for this particular release, to update my status? Why not the last >> release? What changed? There were only a few new features added >> to this release. What made the difference? >> >> More importantly, as I suggested in my original post, this practice >> sets an absurd precedent, one that motivated Stallman to write >> the GNU manifesto (where he used the oxygen mask metaphor). >> Should we reevaluate all contributors, present or past, and >> adjust the level of deprecation on the >> author line appropriately before each release? >> >> I suspect that I have contributed far more than some of the >> people listed on the author line. Does this mean that their >> contributions should be discounted accordingly? If not, >> why not? >> >> Thanks for your courage. People who send supportive comments >> tend to send them off-list, not wanting to state them publicly. >> >> Dominick >> >> >> -- >>> Statistics& Software Consulting >>> GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc. >>> tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP >>> email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com >>> >>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> >> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
