On Sunday, April 29, around midday, I published an interview with the new leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project, Sam Hocevar. It is essential to understand that we are geographically located at what the American comedian Jerry Seinfeld once called the arse-end of the world (actually there are a few countries who would better merit that description but never mind) so we see the sun a good deal before the rest of the globe does. Simply put, the timezone for us in eastern Australia is 10 hours ahead of GMT.

Hence, that interview went up at 02.00GMT.

Now, I never claimed that this was the first interview with Hocevar. That wasn't the point of talking to this genial French bloke who has just been voted into one of the most challenging jobs in the FOSS world. No, the point was to give people some idea about him as hundreds of thousands of users will be affected, one way or the other, by decisions taken during his tenure.

But others apparently want to claim they are first - even when they publish something well after we do. And when told about this, the way they try to wriggle out of its is downright amusing - and also an indicator of the way companies with "open source" in their name are now bigger users of weasel words than famed American corporations such as SCO.

The facts: I wrote to linux.com, part of the OSTG, which also owns the American tech news site Slashdot, after noticing this headine on one of their articles: "First interview: Sam Hocevar, new Debian Project Leader". In the opening paragraph of the story, this claim was pushed further, saying "Recently, Linux.com discussed these challenges with Hocevar via email in his first interview since his election." It carried the byline Bruce Byfield.

The story was datelined April 30, 08.01AM GMT. That means April 30, 6.01pm Australian time. You can work out how much ahead we were when it came to publishing times. Even without the time difference between the US and Australia, we were a day ahead.