If you write a scholarly publication and cite another one, what you say about it depends on its mutability. An article or a book can be cited by saying “this publication I’m identifying here says this”. Maybe you have to version your claim: “the second edition of this publication says this”. They’re immutable. Even if the third edition doesn’t say the thing you relied on in constructing your argument, the second edition still did. Someone who can get access to that second edition can look at it and see how you built your synthesis.
You can’t do that with a website. Websites change. Instead, you have to say that “this website identified by this URL, on the date that I read it, said this”. Someone who comes along later has to sort-of trust that, because if the website no longer says that, it might not be possible to tell whether it ever did say that, or whether you’re telling porky pies about your research.
Dependencies in software systems are usually given as if they work like book citations:
gem 'rack', '1.0'
…looks like it says “the thesis that’s constructed by my software is a synthesis in which version 1.0 of rack is axiomatic”, but it doesn’t. It’s really saying “at the time that I want you to think that I actually tested this stuff, it was true that the thing identified by being version 1.0 of rack was…”. It’s really a poorly-constructed website citation.
It’s fun to think, particularly in light of the npm shenanigans, just how long that dependency you didn’t bother downloading will still be around. You can presumably forget about relying on commercial software, as the licence agreement is the legal equivalent of Vader saying “I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.” And indeed you can forget most open sores licences, which don’t put any requirements on your supplier. But what about the GPL? Version 3 (retrieved from this URL on 24th March 2016) says that anybody who distributes licensed software as object code may, as one possible way to provide access to the corresponding source code, provide that object:
accompanied by a written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (1) a copy of the Corresponding Source for all the software in the product that is covered by this License, on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge
What if the person you got the object code from dies within that three year period, do you have the right to ask the executor of their estate for the source code?
