Open-source software is everywhere, and developers use it to speed up their development on a regular basis. This is as it should be, for the most part, assuming the developers follow the licensing for whatever open-source software (OSS) they use. Along with licensing, the open-source community is, probably rightly so, very focused on attributing credit correctly. Considering that most OSS developers do not make any money for their contributions, credit and reputation are really the only compensation they can expect.

Imagine the horror in the OSS community then, when a mini-TEDTalk was released today that had presenter Chris Hughes showing off augmented-reality software that is built on very powerful open-source toolkits, but fails to attribute any credit to them, or even mention their existence.

Ralph Hauwert certainly took issue, and wrote a scathing blog post describing the offense. To TED's credit, they have updated the page for today's video, acknowledging the furor and offering an explanation. According to the update, Chris hadn't been intending on presenting at TED, but after privately showing his project to a number of people, he was invited to do a short 2 minute presentation. Due to the extremely short format, there was apparently no time for attribution of credit for the software frameworks his software was based on.

This is a cautionary tale. Clearly someone made a mistake, and Hughes' reputation may end up bearing the brunt of the error. It's important to remember that in the software business there are always two currencies at play: the typical financial currency that we usually think of (you know, money), and credit for the work that was done. Although there is a lot of open-source software that is licensed to be free to use, that fact amplifies the focus on correctly attributing credit for the work that went into the software.

My guess is this is a lesson Chris Hughes isn't likely to forget again.

The online reputation site Rapleaf provides a way for peers and previous business associates to contribute to an online reputation rating--the sort of thing the Better Business Bureau would've thought of if only they'd had a Web 2.0 nerd on staff. But since we first took a look at Rapleaf, the fellas from the Bay Area have added a new feature, something called "Hover and Discover".

When you hover over a Rapleaf attribute with the mouse pointer, Rapleaf will now show you where it got the information that makes up an element in your Rapleaf rating--whether it was gleaned from a social networking site such as MySpace or provided by a peer who claims to know you. Yeah, all these factors contribute to Rapleaf's estimation of your reputation, and now you can tell where the info actually came from. Useful... especially if Rapleaf got some detail wrong about you!

In urban slang, a rap sheet is defined as a history of criminal behavior. But online, a rap leaf is something entirely different. RapLeaf lets you keep tabs on your reputation and contribute to the online reputation of others. Ever use eBay to rate a seller or buyer? It's kind of like that, except no auctions.

Like eBay, RapLeaf's rating system includes a positive percentage and an overall rating number. The overall rating purports to include factors from social networking sites such as MySpace and is representative of more than just other RapLeaf user's feedback. There appears to be no upper-limit to this figure.

So how useful is this, considering we already have an accurate credit rating system and personal criminal history already available in an online search? We like the RapLeaf idea because it's somewhat self-monitoring like any good social site, and because it's independent of any single commerce site. RapLeaf is nearly about to release their API, too. So commerce site operators will be able to plug in the reputation tools easily. Now why didn't the stodgy old-schoolers at the Better Business Bureau think of something like this?