I’m currently working on my Bachelors dissertation. This involves developing a software product and a 12000 word write-up, mainly covering research, design and development. Now where I am quoting other peoples written work, I am obviously referencing this, but what about code? There have been plenty of times where I’ve looked for a solution to a problem I was unsure of and found someone who had solved the problem. Most of the time I took their code, worked to understand what they were doing, and then wrote my own version in my application, so should it be referenced somehow?
What would you guys do, put a comment in the code referencing the original author, add a reference in the write up or my bibliography, or nothing at all? Where its a significant or interesting piece of code used, I will probably refer to it in my write-up, but for solutions that don’t warrant this, I’m trying to come up with a good solution.
If you were the author of some code I had either used, or been inspired by, what would make you happy that I wasn’t plagiarizing you?
To take this a bit further, there’s really 2 different things here. If I go to MSDN to lookup how to use a particular part of the .net framework, is that something that should be referenced, or is it fair use of the framework. Where as if I’ve used an algorithm that someone clearly developed and put a lot of time into, that’s something I would definitely reference.
It all depends on context. Many algorithms are so well known that they are generally considered public domain and as long as you reference a well known source on the subject then you shouldn’t have any worries (Sorting, Searching)
When dealing with specific problems, especially in other people code, you have to read really carefully. If its published (book, journal, web, etc..) then you must always reference the original, at some point in your dissertation (technically once in then write up and then a comment in the source)
If it’s other peoples work they deserve proper credit. Anything else is plagiarism