I agree with your sentiment but I'm not sure I agree with your point. The problem with taking the attitude of "its all about recognition" is it ignores the fac

I agree with your sentiment but I'm not sure I agree with your point. The problem with taking the attitude of "its all about recognition" is it ignores the fact that (a) other people are willing to take credit for stuff you do and (b) others might take the stuff you did in a direction you don't like. On the first point it shouldn't be news to anyone that there are people who will take credit for things they didn't do. The way those people succeed is by finding things that were done by people who "just want to hack stuff" and then claiming they did it instead. On my second point people who have a claim to helping with your work can hijack it if you don't take your proper credit. Many problems with RSS came from the fact that Dave Winer claimed ownership of it and took it in a completely different direction from its RDF roots. I don't want to rehash that technical argument but that fact remains most of the people who followed Winer did so because they thought he "invented RSS" (or "was the Father of..."). The reason people thought that is because Ramanathan Guha didn't self promote like Winer did. So there are consequences to self-promotion that extend beyond one's personal recognition. If you don't take the credit and leadership role due to you someone else often times will.