Bruce Perens calls web applications with attribution provisions "badgeware." Somehow this seems familiar.
The original quotation comes from the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Humphrey Bogart. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is where a Mexican bandit leader (Gold Hat, played by Alfonso Bedoya) is trying to convince Fred C. Dobbs (played by Bogart) and company that they are the Federales.
- Dobbs: "If you're the police, where are your badges?"
- Gold Hat: "Badges!? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!!"
Source: Wikipedia
I hereby issue the Gold Hat challenge. Find me a mashup of open source applications (not infrastructure) with attribution requirements that adversely constrain the interface and I'll send you a legal copy of the Treasure of Sierra Madre.
Badgeware is oh so catchy and cute. But the underlying issue is attribution is an incentive for innovation with freedom, or a burdensome constraint. And if the deputizing body functions. I'm with Bogart on this one, you are either one of the Federales, or not.
Don't Bogart that cert from me, pass it over, my friend.
