Dru Lavigne linked to AboutBSD.net; it’s an aggregate site that compiles the RSS feeds from a number of BSD sites.
It doesn’t list any news from this site. I had a conversation with “Psyber.Monkey”, the maintainer some months ago and I pointed out that since it was copying posts wholesale, it sounded like I was writing for that website instead of my own, and it didn’t note the source, or even keep my name with my work. He said he’d address that and remove my copied posts until it was fixed. It looks like it hasn’t been addressed.
The BSD license (for example) allows for copying work, but it doesn’t allow you to strip the author’s name off the work. The AboutBSD.net articles at least link back to the original articles now, but I’d like to see more specific attribution, as is done at other places that quote people’s work, like KernelTrap or even (usually) Slashdot.
I don’t want to sound too cranky about it, as he did reach out and check, which is a first – normally I just see my writing surface on aggregate feed sites, and that’s the earliest I hear of it.
Update: I take it back.
Blog aggregators seem to have minimal attribution beyond linking to the original: Planet FreeBSD and Planet KDE are other examples. But those at least mention the source/author in the headline of each entry. AboutBSD should do the same, if not more. But I don’t think the comparison with Kerneltrap or Slashdot is correct. Those aren’t automated aggregators: they’re human-run.
Yeah, the comparison isn’t perfect, but another part of the reason I compare to those sites is that a curated site is much more effective than a feed aggregator. Of course, I’m biased…