I sometimes can’t believe the things I read, but that doesn’t stop me from, if only for a fleeting moment, buying it hook, line and sinker. It didn’t help that this year’s fake Web tech news day came on a Sunday after a nice, long weekend. I was still getting rid of the morning grogginess with a cup of coffee when I saw the first one, ‘Ballmer joins Linux Foundation board.’ Now granted, I know Steve Ballmer had not joined the Linux Foundation board, but I wondered for a moment, was someone commenting on how Microsoft may have some pull with the board as its newfound friend Novell is a card-carrying, platinum member paying, board seat getting company? I didn’t have time for that.

Onto the next headline, which I actually remarked on to my wife. Wow, Mozilla suing Microsoft … over tabbed browsing! I would have to get going on a report, I thought, or a blog post at the very least. I even began a search for some kind of press release from the Mozilla Foundation before I realized the date. Now, I won’t say that I believed the Google free Web flush gag, but visions of fiber connections running through dark, drippy sewer lines did manage to pop into my head.

Perhaps I’m just gullible, but I’ve actually had some experience with these things. The point is not how tired and easily fooled I was last Sunday, it is that the tech news around open source lately has been pretty far from what most anybody foresaw: Oracle’s Unbreakable Red Hat Linux, Novell and Microsoft did what? Sun joins FSF and hires Ian Murdock …

We as industry observers in the press, analyst and blogging ranks need to be aware of this, and use caution with our fake stories because at this rate, today’s hoax might just be tomorrow’s, or next year’s headline.