Comment The Big Read (Score 2) 796
A decade isn't very long in book years, so I'd recommend browsing through the top list from BBC's 2003 survey The Big Read.
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E.R.
Comment Make it easy for your users. (Score 2, Interesting) 173
As several people have said earlier, it would be sloppy not to include a citation to any software you use when you write a scientific text. I've more often experienced the opposite problem; trying to find an article to cite for a piece of software I've needed to use. At times you cannot find such articles and hence you are forced to refer to some web page inststead. Which of course will be down the exact day the referee reads your article. I've never met anyone who are reluctant to cite the software they use. After all, a scientific article on the software frees them from the responsibility of describing every piece of it themselves.
So, to the licensing issue; I'd strongly recommend sticking to one of the standard licenses. It really helps the people who want to use your code (and hence will cite your articles). For every new license your users must consider, they will be forced to decide wether or not they can use your code together with other stuff they need. If they want their program released as free software, and particularly if they want it included in e.g. Debian they will probably steer away from unusual or non-DFSG-compliant licenses. Your supervisor wants them to use your software (even though he might not know that) because usage generates citations.
Trust your users, they will cite you. (And give them the BibTeX entry to your article to make it easier for them.)
Nielsen Sends Wikipedia DMCA Takedown For Station Descriptions 278
RockMFR writes "A DMCA takedown notice sent by Nielsen Media Research to the Wikimedia Foundation has resulted in the deletion of over 300 pages on the English Wikipedia. The pages were 'templates' and categories that listed television stations within various geographical markets in the United States. Discussion of the deletions has focused on whether this type of information can actually be copyrighted, though the content of the takedown notice have not been made public."
Open Source Licenses For Academic Work? 173
An anonymous reader writes "We're in the process of submitting a scientific paper describing some techniques for data analysis. We'll be releasing the associated code, so we're faced with choosing an appropriate license. My supervisor insists there should be a citation clause, requiring any published article that uses results of the software to cite our paper. Of course, ideally, free software shouldn't have such encumbrances, and I initially tried to talk him out of it. However, in academia, the issue of attribution and citation is very important. Also, it is not a restriction on use of the software per se, only on publication of results. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any such license. So I wondered: what do other academic Slashdotters do?"
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