> We've had a Stata community for 25 years and Statalist for 15 years.
> During all that time we have had no detailed rules for borrowing beyond
> those implicit in the "Acknowledgments" and "References" template of
> many, many help files and some brief suggestions in the Statalist FAQ.
But we did not have the situations like this were someone blatantly
rips off another person (several persons, actually). Partly this is
motivated by the increased exposures to ranking (ssc whatshot), and
the fact that programs have become academic commodities that can be
cashed out by submitting to Stata Journal. You tell me who cashed out
on this one. Neither the ssc command or the Journal existed for the
first 15 years of Stata (give or take a few years).
If you look at the older programs, they frequently have the necessary
citation. Many of the newer ones do not. I personally blame this on
one person who exploited "goodwill" and "trust" and made seem it's
okay to do this on a permanent basis. Everyone else is just copying
it. Why not. It gets you ahead and costs you nothing, unless, of
course, someone raises considerable stink about it.
Roy
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