The Linux Attribution Show

Sometimes you have to laugh at people who do things to desperately draw attention to them, and get it wrong. Listening to gaming special of the Linux Action Show, around 12mins in Chris does an Android pick about Swift keyboard. Bryan then jumps into a sly dig at Lifehacker for copying Chris's stuff without linking back. At which point they end the segment and bring the music in.

They come back, only to find that Lifehacker already did a post on Swift keyboard, so they "inadvertently" copied Lifehacker. Presumably someone in their IRC channel posted a link while they were recording. The next part cracked me up, Chris said "well I got the pick from Twitter". I'm guessing Chris wasn't going to attribute the suggestion to the person who actually suggested it, and just let people think it was his find. If he was, he'd have mentioned it before they ended the segment and brought the music in. I notice the show notes doesn't mention who on Twitter Chris got it from. Loving that attribution hypocrisy guys.

To be fair I don't think they intentionally copied other sites to pass off as their own, many tech people read lots of tech sites, and we'll all see many of the same articles either on Slashdot, Ars Technica or wherever. It was also Bryan who chose to call out Lifehacker and make a big deal of it in his usual laid back way "yeah just link back, we need the links, bold and caps" etc not Chris.

Since Bryan is so attuned to this notion, even to protect his mate, perhaps we should be holding Bryan to the same standard for every post he makes, to ensure that he attributes it properly. Any regular listeners to LAS remember them attributing stuff they do to their listeners when it's a listener suggestion? I don't, but I hadn't had my attention drawn to it until Bryan decided to take issue with Lifehacker about it.