Academic citation for Python

[Graham Dobson]

I really like Tim Church's citation, but I found this in a programming
language list started in March of 1991 at the University of Kansas by Tom
Rombouts:

Python -
  1. Guido van Rossum <guido at cwi.nl> 1991.  A high-level interpreted
language combining ideas from ABC, C, Modula-3, Icon, etc.  Intended for
prototyping or as an extension language for C applications.  Modules,
classes, user-defined exceptions.  "Linking a Stub Generator (AIL) to a
Prototyping Language (Python)", Guido van Rossum et al, Proc 1991 EurOpen
Spring Conf.  Available for Unix, Amoeba and Mac.  Version 1.0.0.
ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/python/python1.0.0.tar.Z
list: python-list at cwi.nl

"Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne at acm.org> wrote in message
news:acn2uu$qrhei$1 at ID-125932.news.dfncis.de...
> The world rejoiced as Ross Lazarus
<do_not_use_this_as_it_does_not_work at bellatlantic.net> wrote:
> > How should the Python language be cited in an academic publication?
> >
> > For example, in
> > http://bioinformatics.oupjournals.org/cgi/reprint/17/8/756.pdf the
> > author mentions http://www.python.org in the text rather than formally
> > citing the primary source - or is that the appropriate primary source
> > and recommended attribution?
> >
> > I found "Copyright 1991-1995 by Stichting Mathematisch Centrum,
> > Amsterdam, The Netherlands" at
> > http://www.python.org/doc/Copyright.html, but that doesn't seem as
> > complete or helpful as I'd like for a refereed journal.
>
> Unlike languages like Ada and FORTRAN and Common Lisp, the creation of
> Python didn't start with the creation of a "de jure" standard,
> documented in academic or government papers; it came as an
> implementation.
>
> I'm not sure that there's any fundamentally better "primary source" to
> look to than <http://www.python.org/>.
>
> There might be some early paper by Guido van Rossum on Python that
> would be of some value; that would be more likely to be a "secondary"
> source, though.
> --
> (reverse (concatenate 'string "ac.notelrac.teneerf@" "454aa"))
> http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/sgml.html
> "...as a robotics designer once told me, you don't really appreciate
> how smart a moron is until you try to design a robot..."
> -- Jerry Pournelle