Status 03 January 2014.
Webpage created 29 December 2013, under construction.
The webpage is devoted to unsolved ethical and legal problems in international elementary particle
physics.
Any comments should be directed to tordriemann@gmail.com; they are welcome and will be used for the
optimization of the webpage.
Few recent developments in the ZFITTER/Gfitter conflict
03 January 2014
The webpage of the Board od Directors of DESY,
http://fh.desy.de/projekte/gfitter01/
Gfitter01.htm, has got some necessary add-ons.
The resulting webpage is
Gfitter01.html
To summarize the situation per 28 December 2013: The expectations of the
ZFITTER memorandum of 4
November 2012, the so-called "ZFITTER one-page-memo", have not been fulfilled so far.
The ZFITTER project homepage is zfitter.com.
For a chronicle of the ZFITTER/Gfitter conflict until April 2013 see:
ZFITTER/Gfitter chronicle
20 July 2013 -
New internet blog: "Friends of ZFITTER"
12 August 2013 -
New webpage of the Board of Directors of DESY:
http://fh.desy.de/projekte/gfitter01/
Gfitter01.htm
Commented at
Friends of ZFITTER
August 2013:
News from a German Helmholtz centre
On 1 August 2013, the case of three disciplinary measures of a German Helmholtz centre
against the ZFITTER spokesperson was brought by the ZFITTER spokesperson before the Labour Court of
county Brandenburg in Cottbus.
A compromise, proposed by the judge, failed so that the court
will decide on the case in December 2013.
The trial at Labour Court of Brandenburg has been shifted to March 2014.
On 8 July 2013, the Commercial Director of a German Helmholtz centre suspected
that the ZFITTER spokesperson is not only the ZFITTER spokesperson, but also
the
responsible author of the German internet blog
"Gfitterplag".
The blog Gfitterplag is written by Ethik-Gruppe Brandenburger Gymnasiasten.
The Commercial Director of a German Helmholtz centre demanded changes at http://zfitter.com,
complained about Gfitterplag, and announced to fire the ZFITTER spokesperson in
case that the publication policies will not get changed.
We do not find this appropriate.
The basic conflict is an ethical, scientific one, and should not be re-directed into
questions of labour law.
The basic conflict is between ZFITTER and Gfitter, and should not be handled by a Commercial
Director of a German Helmholtz centre.
Since 25 July 2013, there is the official webpage of a German Helmholtz centre
http://fh.desy.de/projekte/gfitter01/
Gfitter01.htm
on the Gfitter project.
The responsible author is the Representative of the German Helmholtz centre.
The webpage http://fh.desy.de/projekte/gfitter01/ is not reported by search engines.
We got informed by "Friends of ZFITTER".
28 March 2013
The final decision of the DESY directorate on:
"Suspected case of scientific misconduct Zfitter[ZFITTER]/Gfitter"
added on 18 July 2013
The decision and an accompanying letter were reproduced in German at a google link.
In addition, we reproduced here English tranlations of both documents.
We did so because a general interest of the public is evident, and both documents were not labeled
as being confidential or only as being
restricted to a limited community.
We follow the demand of DESY dated 8 July 2013, known to us since 15 July 2013, not to share these
four documents with the public.
28 March 2013
On 28 March 2013, the DESY Directorate decided finally on the
"Suspected case of scientific misconduct Zfitter [ZFITTER]/Gfitter".
The decision NB.1735 became known to the ZFITTER spokesperson on 20 April 2013.
It is
reproduced in German here:
ERASED 18 July 2013, 1/7
An English translation may be found here:
ERASED 18 July 2013, 2/7
22 April 2013
The accompanying letter, dated 5 April 2013, arrived 22 April
2013, may be found here in German:
ERASED 18 July 2013, 3/7
An English translation may be found here:
ERASED 18 July 2013, 4/7
2 years ago - 21 April 2011
The 28 March 2013 DESY Directorate decision follows up the
decision of the DESY Directorate of 21 April 2011 after the "Buchmüller
report" (see the
ZFITTER/Gfitter
chronicle page).
The decision is reproduced here in German:
0B_sXq0RF9vRVMjZGN0pCTjNXb2M.
An English translation may be found here:
2011-04-21-
direktoriumsbeschluss-zum-ombudsbericht-en.pdf.
Essentials of the 2013 decision are sentences of the introducing statements:
"... Given the expert reports requested, the Board of
Directors may not observe a sufficient disrespection [hinreichende
Beeinträchtigung] of copyright of the Zfitter authors.
The rules of good
scientific practice have not been infringed,
since,
due to the lack of known
rules [fehlende bekannte Regelbildung] for quotation of used open source
software, no significant culpable misconduct may be identified. ..."
The introduction finishes with the statement
"The Board of Directors shall adopt ... measures in order to
finally
settle the conflict ..."
Few of the six "measures":
ERASED 18 July 2013, 5/7
The ZFITTER Memorandum of 4 November 2012
The Board of Directors of DESY "... shall adopt the ... measures in
order to finally settle the conflict ..."
One can only hope that the "Measures" solve all the issues raised in the
"Memorandum on ZFITTER/Gfitter" of 4 November 2012 on
ZFITTER/Gfitter
[one-page-memo
].
The memorandum expresses the expectations of the ZFITTER authors Prof. A.
Akhundov, Prof. P.Christova, Dr. S. Riemann, Dr. T. Riemann et al.
Suspected reasoning behind the "Final decision" of the DESY Directorate
on "Suspected case of scientific misconduct Zfitter [ZFITTER]/Gfitter"
-
Texts.
It is not taken into account whether or not Gfitter authors made
some use of ZFITTER texts.
This question is not considered to be relevant. It is not recognized and not
disputed. We do not agree, but will not come back to this issue in the
following.
Reminder:
The Springer Editors and Publisher argued that for "text consisting of
formulas" and/or for "text in latex form" the usual copyright rules and
quotation rules do not apply.
The present approach is more stringent: Do not touch the issue.
-
Software.
It is not taken into account whether or not Gfitter authors made essential
or unessential use of ZFITTER software.
This fact plays no role in the arguing on the supected misconduct,
though: A neutral expert will be appointed in order to assess the degree of agreement.
-
Licences. Conditions of use.
The CPC licence of ZFITTER is disregarded, as well as the conditions of use
formulated by the authors.
ZFITTER is considered to be open source software. The notion "open source
software" is considered to be well-defined.
The usage of "open source software" follows no known rules or licences, or, if
there are such rules or licences, they are understood to be known to everybody
and not to be violated here.
-
Academic citation.
The simple and strict, universal rules of academic citation - mention if you
use scientific results of others - do not apply to the present case.
Due to the construct that it is software, more precise: open source software,
what is considered.
Seemingly, this kind of invention - software - is not considered to be a kind
of "scientific result".
In fact, there are the summarizing statements by an Administrative Director:
(i) The ZFITTER CPC licence is no valid licence and thus is not to be
respected.
(ii) ZFITTER is open source software and thus there is no need to
quote it in case of use.
-
Copyright.
In many countries, the authors of software have some copyright (Urheberrecht).
This is accepted here for ZFITTER (according to the requested expert views
mentioned), but not violated.
The arguing is not clear in this respect.
Generally speaking, copyright is a national issue. So, one would have to apply
regulations of the countries of use (Gfitter: tracing back by CERN, DESY,
University Hamburg, etc.) and see whether they demand to respect regulations of
the countries of ZFITTER creation (ZFITTER: tracing back by JINR, Russia,
Aserbaidschan, Bulgaria, East Germany, Germany etc.).
[Remember the different licence struggles of Apple and Samsung in different
countries.]
One has to assume that the arguing is: Copyright of the
ZFITTER authors is not violated because it is of no practical relevance.
-
Plagiarism.
Delicate.
There is no generally accepted definition of plagiarism, like in the case of
open source software. The DESY Directorate has to apply the definition of its
Company Regulations.
Again,the arguing is not clear in this respect.
One has to assume that [open source] software is not considered to be a
scientific achievement. In this case, the regulations do not apply in principle
and the amount of software "integrations" play no role, and the outcome of the expert's study
is irrelevant for the ethical estimation.
-
A final remark.
Delicate.
ERASED 18 July 2013, 6/7
-
Another final remark.
Delicate.
There is the so-called Erratum to the article in "European Physical Journal",
volume 60 (2009), p. 543. This "Erratum" contains information which does not
describe
reality.
Without any ethical or moral impetus, let us hope that this gets corrected asap
[as soon as possible].
-
A last final remark.
Delicate.
ERASED 18 July 2013, 7/7
It would be a true wonder if the ethical issues would have been solved.
Without an involvement of the ZFITTER party in the negotiations.
The details of the decision are of general relevance for the particle
physics community because they define
the approach of a "Big Particle Physics Lab" on central issues of
the practical handling of academic software.
-
Copyright on academic, scientific software
Given the "integrations" of software (the Directorate does not refer to
integrations of text), which had not been referenced, the reader of
the Directorate's decision has to conclude that authors of academic software
cannot expect that they have to be named when the software is used.
At first glance this seems to contradict German copyright law
(Dt. Urheberrechtsgesetz, paragraph 13).
It would be extremely enlightening to learn more on that matter from the "expert
reports" mentioned in the Directorate's decision.
More generally speaking, the issue of national copyright law, in a pure
legal understanding, is a mere national issue and as such not too appropriate
for our kind of problems. Having in mind the cooperation and competition in an
international envirement like elementary particle physics. E.g. ZFITTER has
contributors from many countries with quite different legal traditions.
- Licencing of academic, scientific software
The formulation of the basic judgement expresses that the Directorate considers
ZFITTER to be open source software and thus automatically not to
underly any conditions of use.
At first glance, this is an unexpected opinion.
Having in mind that everybody involved knows (from several sources) that the
ZFITTER authors as well as the users of ZFITTER have to respect e.g. the
licence statements of
the
"Computer Physics Communications
Program Library".
It should be of no importance whether the CPC licence is a "licence"
according to definitions of German law. This might be disputable.
Here it is of relevance that the CPC licence expresses the expectation of CPC
and of
the authors against the users to respect some rules.
Both the CPC Program Library (until now) and ZFITTER (until quite recently)
allow the anonymous download of ZFITTER software.
Outside academic research, there is consensus in society the a person who
allows the anonymous download of a photograph, a painting, a text, a movie, a
song, of software, or whatsoever, has the right to formulate some conditions
of use.
And if this expression of conditions of use is not as explicit as
needed, the potential user has to care about a correct handling of the
situation.
At first glance, one might wonder that the corresponding rules on
using the inventions of others are much less stringent in academic research.
As mentioned: The Directorate tends to characterize software, which is
available for
anonymous download, automatically as open source software.
What does this mean? This is not evident.
There are several, contradictory definitions of open source software.
Most of them relate to a certain understanding of the corresponding licencing.
Yes, normally open source software is licenced. Everybody knows this.
Wikipedia, e.g., is full of articles on that issue.
One has to be aware that there are not
automatically no rules of proper use.
In any case, ZFITTER authors have, naively, the opinion that ZFITTER is no open
source software in the strictest sense of word. Instead, it is software with
source-open text and with conditions of use. Part of the latter is the CPC
Program Library licence.
Why not respect this?
It would be extremely enlightening to learn more on the foundation of the
Directorate's arguing about ZFITTER's licencing.
- Referencing to academic, scientific software
The Directory states in the introduction:
... due to the lack of known
rules [fehlende bekannte Regelbildung] for quotation of used open source
software, no significant culpable misconduct may be identified.
Naively, this is a strange statement.
In the naive understanding of rules of academic citing, a researcher has to
explicitly mention which scientific achievements of other researchers he/she is
using. Whatever it is.
One has to mention e.g. equipment, data, software, any kind of
substantial support, collections of complicated formulas, articles etc.
This demand of proper mentioning is not intrinsically related to
copyright law or any kind of licencing. Certainly, if there is a licence, or a
so-called licence, or a copyright to be respected, one should do this.
But quite independent of that, authors have to express which scientific
achievements of others they are using - if the use is essential enough to be
mentioned, of course.
It would be extremely enlightening to learn more on the approach of the
Directorate not to expect proper citation for certain software,
be it open-source or not.
Another, related question is, why a
"... lack of known rules for quotation of used open source software ...
is observed by the Directorate.
The reader will understand that, in view of the present situation, we do not
comment the documents in further detail. At the
ZFITTER/Gfitter
chronicle page, we will allow
ourselves to place, step by step, further auxiliary information.
"Abmahnung" - a disciplinary measure in German labor law
The ZFITTER spokesperson was informed on the decision of the DESY Board of
Directors on the ZFITTER/Gfitter conflict in connection with the related
decision to sanction the ZFITTER spokesperson by an "Abmahnung" on 20 March
2013. Abmahnung (notice) is a disciplinary measure in German labor law.
The "Abmahnung" (notice) of the ZFITTER spokesperson is, if we neglect
the "schriftliche Ermahnung" (written warning) against him as less
significant, the only sanction decided in the "Suspected case of scientific
misconduct Zfitter [ZFITTER]/Gfitter".
The "Abmahnung" is performed in accordance with
DESY GO/BO
2010, the company regulations (BO),
"Violation of work obligation, BO 204, GO page 81":
204 Violation of work obligation
If employees violate obligations that are incumbent on them, the -V2-
department of DESY can initiate the following measures depending on the
severity of the violation of work obligation:
a) written warning (schriftliche Ermahnung),
b) notice (Abmahnung),
c) termination (Küdigung).
In short term, the above last minute informations will be relocated to the
ZFITTER/Gfitter
chronicle page.
Personal Statement
On 20 March 2013, the employer of the ZFITTER spokesperson performed a
disciplinary measure against him, by issuing a written
notice of warning (Abmahnung).
This disciplinary measure has been initiated by the employer as part of the
negotiations of the ZFITTER and Gfitter collaborations.
The negotiations concern the copyright violations claimed by ZFITTER since March 2011.
If a necessity is seen by the employer, the next step is the termination
of employment of the ZFITTER spokesperson.
As a signal of good-will, we slightly edited this webpage, although it is not part of content of the
written
notice of warning.
We do so in order to safely ensure that this webpage will not contain any material which might
damage the reputation of
the employer, its
employees, and/or its/their cooperation partners.
To damage the reputation of any institution or person was not and is not our intention.
In case you, as a visitor of this webpage, find any need to improve the contents further in this
respect, please send an
email to tordriemann@googlemail.com.
Today, after more than two years of negotiations, one may develop the opinion it would have been
appropriate to stay
silent.
In this specific case.
Even in view of evident plagiarism.
We did not stay silent, and after careful consultation with relatives, collegues, and friends we
come to the conclusion:
"When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." [Yevgeny Yevtushenko]
Dr. Tord Riemann, ZFITTER spokesperson, April 2013, Königs Wusterhausen
The "Abmahnung" is performed in accordance with
DESY GO/BO
2010, the company regulations (BO),
"Violation of work obligation, BO 204, GO page 81":
204 Violation of work obligation
If employees violate obligations that are incumbent on them, the -V2-
department of DESY can initiate the following measures depending on the
severity of the violation of work obligation:
a) written warning (schriftliche Ermahnung),
b) notice (Abmahnung),
c) termination (Küdigung).
For some facts on the ZFITTER - Gfitter negotiations 2011 - 2013: see the
ZFITTER/Gfitter chronicle
page.
Copyright
© Tord Riemann zfitter.com 2011 - 2013
Die Vervielfältigung, Verbreitung und Veröffentlichung
unterliegt der Creative
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Tord Riemann
Last modified: December 2013
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