Respect for intellectual labor and creativity is vital to academic discourse and enterprise. This principle applies to works of all authors and publishers in all media. It encompasses respect for the right to acknowledgement, right to privacy, and right to determine the form, manner, and terms of publication and distribution.
Because electronic information is volatile and easily reproduced, respect for the work and personal expression of others is especially critical in computer environments. Violations of authorial integrity, including plagiarism, invasion of privacy, unauthorized access, and trade secret and copyright violations, may be grounds for sanctions against members of the academic community.
(source: NMSU Computer Center Guidelines, Software and Intellectual Rights)
The computer facilities of the Department of Computer Science are intended to support the department's instructional and research activities. The facilities are also used for derivative activities such as department administration and facility support. There are typically more demands for use of these facilities than can be easily met, at least at times of peak usage. The following guidelines are intended to resolve such usage conflicts in an orderly fashion while protecting the department's capability for discharging its instructional and research responsibilities.
Covered in this document are the ownership of the facilities; policies regarding accounts; uses of the facilities; and behavior regarding accounts and file space.
Computing equipment and file space in the Department of Computer Science is owned by the Board of Regents of New Mexico State University. Access to equipment and file space is a privilege granted to users in order to facilitate instruction and research. Users are issued individual accounts and allocated file space for this purpose. The file space allocated to a user is referred to as being ``owned'' by that user's account or by that user; this usage of the term is only a convenience and expressly does not imply legal ownership, but only permission to use these facilities under the policies and procedures of the University.
There are three classes of equipment in the Department: general purpose equipment; special purpose instructional equipment; and research equipment. To the greatest extent possible, access to all equipment shall be open to all users.
General Purpose Equipment
This equipment includes the computers in SH 118 and SH 169. All graduate and undergraduate students currently enrolled in classes requiring the use of this equipment, all faculty members, and all staff members will be granted accounts on this equipment, subject to University policies and procedures.
While this equipment is essentially general purpose in nature, and hence open to all users, not all of these machines are configured identically.
Special Purpose Instructional Equipment
Other instructional equipment meets the special needs of particular classes. Occasionally some of the computers in SH 118 are reserved for the students of a particular class. Other users may receive access to this equipment by obtaining permission from the instructor (if a faculty member) or course director for classes making use of the equipment. This access will be granted if, in the judgement of the instructor or director, the access will not have an impact on the courses using the equipment. In any event, class usage will have priority over other usage on this equipment.
Research Equipment
Other equipment in the department is purchased to facilitate research activities and projects. This equipment will range from locally developed, unstable, experimental hardware through standard, commercially available hardware and software products.
In order to give students the broadest possible exposure to a variety of hardware and software environments, researchers are encouraged to grant the broadest possible access to research equipment.
As stated above, the principal uses of the department's equipment are instruction, research, and administration. There are certain acceptable uses other than these. In particular, the network is a primary communications tool for people in the field. The use of the network is in fact encouraged as contributing to more effective communication to the benefit of all concerned.
All users of the facilities are expected to take a responsible and professional approach to use of the facilities. Since the facilities are shared, every user must accept the specific responsibility of minimizing the impact of one's computations on other users. Where possible those computations which make heavy demands on shared resources should be run at off-hours or at low priority. It is never acceptable to run poorly-debugged or resource-intensive programs under circumstances where other's computations might be damaged or made ineffective.
There are incidental uses, such as game-playing, which are acceptable only when resources are in excess supply. Any usage of this type should always be with attention to other demands on the system, and should be immediately discontinued if conflicts appear.
The use of any university facilities for support of private enterprises such as outside consulting should only be in accordance with stated policies, and under explicit written agreements.
Users shall never, under any circumstances, gain or attempt to gain unauthorized access to other user accounts or file space. Any evidence that such access has been gained will be investigated and will be subject to disciplinary action.
Some examples of items which will be considered as evidence of attempts to gain access to other users' accounts are: files containing information for use in accessing other users' accounts (such as lists of accounts and their associated passwords in the Unix domain); programs capable of obtaining information which will be useful in accessing other users' accounts (such as programs which collect passwords, in the Unix domain); and programs which provide a mechanism for accessing other users' accounts (such as programs belonging to other users with the ``set-uid bit'' set, in the Unix domain). This list only gives examples, and is not exhaustive.
Successful and unsuccessful attempts to make use of the Unix su (set user) program are logged by the system; repeated attempts to use this program will also be taken as evidence of attempts to gain access to other users' accounts or to the root account.
Notwithstanding users' rights to privacy, the Department may inspect users' accounts and file space for investigation of suspected infractions of University policies, or as needed for maintenance functions.
In addition to regular user accounts, accounts may also be made available on a short-term basis to persons not affiliated with the University, in order to support collaboration between the Department and other entities, to permit debugging and development of software for the Department, and for other purposes as the need arises. All such accounts must be approved by the Department Head.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary satisfactory to the Department, all activity taking place on a user's account will be ascribed to the owner of the account. The owner of an account will also be held responsible for activity on that account. Each user is expected to take reasonable care to ensure that unauthorized users are not able to gain access to his or her account and files.
Account Security
Users should change passwords frequently, and should not reveal their passwords to other users (NOTE: if you are tempted to let another person use your account, consider carefully that you may be held responsible for anything that person does, including activities which may be subject to disciplinary action!). Passwords should not be written down. There is a program in the Unix domain called obvious, which checks the difficulty of guessing a password. Only passwords acceptable to obvious should be used.
If a user has reason to believe that someone has gained unauthorized access to his or her account, the password should be changed and the suspicion should be brought to the attention of a member of the Computer Science Faculty or of the Computer Operations Group immediately.
Files
As issued, an account has exclusive access to its file space. Changing protections to make file space accessible to other users is considered to be equivalent to explicitly permitting other users on the system this access. In cases involving plagiarism of assignments, the guilt of the person committing the plagiarizing is not lessened by the other party having made the information available. Moreover, the person who made the information available may be held to have assisted in the plagiarizing, and may also be subject to disciplinary action.