Re: Total confusion in RSS-Land

[Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>]

Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net> wrote:

> I didn't realize that RSS-DEV had a charter, etc.; pleasant surprise.
> Unfortunately, groups that come about without a larger context may have
> difficulty asserting any authority, as might be the case here ;)

I don't see our job as asserting authority -- we're not the Web police here.
We're just trying to write a spec, if people want to use it, wonderful, if
they don't, we may not like it, but we won't try and force them to use it.

A related issue is the "clout" associated with a larger body. However, this
is really only effective in choosing between competitors, which isn't
currently a major issue for RSS. People will only use a spec if they have a
need to, not just because a group like the W3C has issued it as a
recommendation.

> Having to justify your choices, as well as having deadlines (however
> soft) tend to encourage decisions; hopefully rational ones.

And this is most definitely a job that our chair has been vigilant in making
sure is being done.

> I'm regularly accused of being an optimist; no worries. I agree that good
> people are doing good work here, but I'm concerned that without a larger
> context, this work will be lost. RSS as a format has had half-acceptance for
> a long, long time; I'd like to see that change, but IMHO nothing on either
> side of the fence here is really encouraging that.

Ideally, I'd like to see "blessing" of RSS by the W3C, and an
acknowledgement of how it fits into the Semantic Web. However, I'd be
against moving the spec into an official W3C WG. Do you think this would be
just as good? Or at least a decent compromise?

-- 
Aaron Swartz | me@aaronsw.com | http://www.aaronsw.com