Attribution in copyright law, is the requirement to acknowledge or credit the author of a work which is used or appears in another work. Attribution is required by most copyright and copyleft licenses, such as the GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons licenses.[1]
Attribution is often considered the most basic of requirements made by a license, as it allows an author to accumulate a positive reputation that partially repays their work and prevents others from claiming fraudulently to have produced the work. It is widely regarded as a sign of decency and respect to acknowledge the creator by giving him/her credit for the work.