Blogger claiming "shared source" is approved by OSI

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

"Alexander Terekhov" <alexander.terekhov at gmail.com> writes:
> To quote Tim Smith of gnu.misc.discuss (and also c.o.l.a.) replying to
> some paranoid GNUtian and "freedom" lover like mini-RMS
> (<rms at 1407.org>) fellow:
>
> ------
> A lot of your items fall victim to what I call the blog effect.  What
> happens is that *one* blog posts a bit of speculation, or otherwise
> posts something that turns out not to be accurate.  Other bloggers read
> it, and some post about it.  Others read those, and some of those blog,
> and so on.  Once you get past the first level, you start losing some of
> the paths back to the original.  So you end up with blogs repeating the
> original item, saying that they got it from several blogs, and that
> gives the impression that there are independent sources for the
> item--but it all goes back to one, unverified, source.
>
> And nowadays, all the major tech news outlets ALSO have blogs, so people
> read something on a CNET or Wired blog, say, and then when they blog
> about it, they say "CNET is reporting that...", and this adds further
> credibility in the mind of subsequent readers--they think the blogger is
> reporting on a news story from CNET, not on a random CNET blog entry.
> ------

This happens all the time - just look at how often Cringeley's
speculations about Google or Apple are reported as fact by the
mainstream press a few days later.

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav
Senior Software Developer
Linpro AS - www.linpro.no