> I think we need to be careful about how we define creative contribution; there's a line to be drawn somewhere in there between a creative contribution for the sake of the software (i.e., speeding up execution time by 4x for a simulation running on a cluster) versus a creative contribution that enables the research (i.e., a novel real-time optimization algorithm for electrostimulation). The latter certainly warrants authorship, but I don't think the former does.

So a contribution is only a contribution if it contains an appropriate amount of NIH?

No programmer is going to going to want to work with academics, if they are forced to inject bogus novelty in order to get fair attribution for the real work.