Use credits.txt to credit contributors to your website, like open source software developers, who don’t get credit in your site’s text.
Many people sharing work for free online rely on credits to build reputation. A good reputation helps them find the paying opportunities that fund their free work.
How To
For each contributor, list their name and a description of what they contributed. If you use work from lots of people, compile your credits.txt automatically, with free tools.
Serve credits.txt as a UTF-8-encoded, plain-text file at /credits.txt, without authentication.
Include a link in your <head> tags:
<link rel="credits" href="/credits.txt" />
See this site’s credits.txt for an example.
Tools
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The creditstxt npm package lists contributors to all the npm packages you use.
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The creditstxt RubyGem lists authors of all the RubyGems you use.
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The git-creditstxt script lists all Git commit authors and committers.
Prior Art
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film industry norms and systems for opening and closing credits
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billing norms in a variety of creative arts
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print mastheads and lead authorship
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robots.txtrobot exclusion protocol -
Internet Advertising Bureau’s
ads.txt