Drumbeat/Attribution generator

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OpenAttribute: The world's simplest open attribution tool

  • A Mozilla Drumbeat project born at the "Learning, Freedom and the Web" Festival
  • Currently in the strategy / scope / story / design phase. Dive in and get involved. Details below.

Project tools

  • Mailing list: Google Group is here
  • Twitter hash tag: #Drumbeat #OpenAttribute
  • Chat room (IRC): Host Name: irc.mozilla.org Channel Name: #openattribute
  • Issue tracker: coming soon [shall we set up an open atrium basecamp / tracker?]

Help this project now

Code available:

Testing is always appreciated! Install Open Attribute and let us know your thoughts!

Help test early versions, see http://yergler.net/blog/2010/12/31/minor-update-for-openattribute/


The project in 5 sentences

  • Creative Commons content is awesome, but attributing it properly can be difficult and confusing.
  • How-to guides and user education haven't helped much. We need a simple tool everyone can use to do the right thing with the click of a button.
  • That's why we're building OpenAttribute, a suite of tools that makes it ridiculously simple for anyone to copy and paste the correct attribution for any CC licensed work.
  • The tools include a simple add-on for web browsers, and plug-ins for popular publishing platforms like Flickr, Wordpress, MediaWiki and Drupal.
  • The result: OpenAttribute makes it easy for everyday people to use open and Creative Commons content. And ensures content creators get credit for their work.

One-page overview

OpenAttribute: the world's simplest open attribution tool
OpenAttribute is a project to build attribution generators for Creative Commons licensed content. We’re building simple tools for a range of platforms so that re-using and attributing open content is as easy as cut and paste.

The problem: Creative Commons licensed content is awesome, but attributing it properly can be difficult and confusing.
The first rule for re-using openly licensed content is that you have to properly attribute the creator. There are specific requirements for what needs to go into that attribution, and most people don’t know what they are or how to follow them. How-to guides and user education haven't helped much; too many people are still confused about what to put into an attribution and how to format it.

The solution: A simple tool everyone can use to do the right thing with the click of a button.
That's why we're building OpenAttribute, a suite of tools that makes it ridiculously simple for anyone to copy and paste the correct attribution for any CC licensed work. These tools will query the metadata around a CC-licensed object and exit in a properly formatted attribution that users can copy and paste wherever they need to. Citation generators already exist for lots of academic bibliographic formats and many different settings. By building on those tools to produce attributions, we’re creating a clean solution to a messy problem.

The tools include a simple add-on for web browsers, and plug-ins for popular publishing platforms like Flickr, Wordpress, MediaWiki and Drupal.
To make automated attribution generation really useful, we need to enable it in a variety of contexts. We need several tools in several places. With an add-on for browsers, users will be able to pull RDFa from any site where it’s available and produce formatted attributions; plugins and widgets for open content publishing platforms like Wordpress and Drupal, will allow creators to facilitate proper attribution of their work.

The result: OpenAttribute makes it easy for everyday people to use Creative Commons licensed content. And ensures content creators get credit for their work.
There is an enormously rich pool of open content out there, the easier we can make it to use and reuse that content, the better.

Project infographic

  • Coming soon

Potential project names

Frequently Asked Questions (F.A.Q.)

Functional Specification

Roadmap