[Rd] authorship and citation

[Andrew Robinson]

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.

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 Dușa 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 The co-author recently withdrawn from the package development, but still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 Since the co-author withdrawn from the package development, erase his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
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Andrew Robinson
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Reader & Associate Professor in Applied Statistics  Tel: (+61) 0403 138 955
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4599
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Email: a.robinson at ms.unimelb.edu.au
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