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RSS-Classic, RSS 1.0 and a historical debt
I'm really suprised to be having this discussion over again.
This message is rather long, and contains a number of excerpts from
ancient RSS history that I was hoping not to need to wave around. But
this RSS naming debate has gone on too long, and it's time to settle it.
Contrary to what you might hear, the RSS 1.0 proposal did not come from
a bunch of outsiders who swooped in and grabbed the prestigious acronym
'RSS'. RSS 1.0 as proposed is solidly grounded in the original RSS
vision, which itself had a long heritage going back to MCF (an RDF
precursor) and related specs (CDF etc). This can be seen for
example from Guha's longstanding involvement, and Dan Libby's account of
the Netscape RSS work and endorsement of the 1.0 proposal.
The bigger picture that Netscape's RSS effort presented was one that
connected RSS syndication (my.netscape portals etc) to channel and
sitemap functionality in their next-generation Web browser technology
(the XML/RDF-based Mozilla, see http://www.mozilla.org/rdf/doc/),
as well as to open Web directory services, ie. the
Dublin Core Open Directory RDF dumps (available at http://dmoz.org/rdf.html).
This was a pretty good thing to aim at, and with RSS 1.0 I believe we're
in with a chance of delivering it.
I for one am fed up with the repeated accusation that we (to put
it bluntly) stole RSS from Dave Winer. I've been through that debate once[1]
on the FoRK list, and it wasn't at all pleasant.
The continuing fuss about the name for the NS/RDF-based RSS 1.0
document is doing nobody any good. Dave very graciously conceded the
point back in September[2]; I fail to see why we're still burning
bandwidth on this topic many weeks later. Hence this historically
oriented message.
We proposed RSS 1.0 in the light of several years experience with RSS
and related technologies. The 1.0 proposal does its best to play well
with related specifications (eg. Dublin Core), to remain close to the
0.9, yet to learn from the problems we've encountered with deploying and
extending earlier RSS specs.
If there is interest in continuing to evolve and polish RSS-based specs
in the "RDF and namespaces, no thanks" tradition ([3]), that's just
fine. RSS-Classic is a perfectly good name for this effort. We can
explain how to map between RSS 1.0 and RSS-Classic formats, and explain
the different approaches to extensibility and format evolution adopted
by each approach.
But I'm thoroughly tired of being accussed (on list and off) of our
having 'stolen' RSS. Those of us working on RSS 1.0 have an obligation
to make sure RSS-Classic deployers are left in the picture, and that
(bi-directional) conversion tools and suchlike are made available. The
sooner we put the naming issue behind us, the sooner we can get to work
on a complete picture of the RSS landscape.
I believe we have more than adequate historical justification for
calling the 'new' stuff RSS. To defend this observation requires
pointing to a bunch of historical baggage that I've previously avoided
publicising. I thought we'd had this debate and the result was 'RSS 1.0'
and 'RSS-Classic'. It appears not.
So, let's get this over with. Some historical observations.
scriptingNews (the immediate source of the additional elements added
into the last version of RSS before Netscape dropped the ball) was quite
plainly derrived from Microsoft's Channel Definition Format (CDF).
The RSS timeline at http://backend.userland.com/rss091 neglects to
mention this. Dave, when questioned on this point [4], declined to name
any technical innovation in scriptingNews that wasn't already in the
well known CDF spec that predated scriptingNews _and_ RSS. Nothing in
scriptingNews (sometimes claimed as the original RSS spec in all but
name) was interestingly new. scriptingNews was a clone of CDF. I
believe this to be an uncontroversial observation rather than an
accusation of any bad doing.
But don't take my word for it. See
http://ilrt.org/discovery/2000/08/rss/forked/forked.txt for samples of
scriptingNews, RSS 0.91 and the original CDF spec, which was proposed
even before XML was finished. Spot the difference.
CDF wasn't the only spec that pre-dated XML. Quite some time before CDF
and scriptingNews, there were hundreds of grassroots MCF channels out
there. A directory of URLs still survives (thought the site's up
and down) at http://www.xspace.net/hotsauce/sites.html (page last
updated Nov 1997, if their HTTP headers are to be believed.). MCF was
Meta Content Format, basically Guha's work at Apple (before he moved to
Netscape, and before MCF fed into the RDF design at W3C and the
RSS designs at Netscape). MCF attempted to do two things: (1) provide a
simple text format that content creators could use to expose
machine-readable news channels and sitemaps (2) back
this up with a rich and extensible information model, so it had some
hope of scaling to the Web. Way back then, we saw significant
grassroots adopting of MCF. The list of (mostly broken, sadly) links at
http://www.xspace.net/hotsauce/sites.html shows that MCF was a very
practical, deployable option back then.
The RSS timeline at http://backend.userland.com/rss091 neglects to
mention this work, and RSS's relationship to it. MCF channels / sitemaps
directly fed into the original RSS design. On the contrary, the claims
in http://my.userland.com/stories/storyReader$11 ignore both CDF and MCF:
[[
For many people <scriptingNews> format will be new, but it's
actually the oldest syndication format on the
web. It was first described and deployed publicly in December 1997...
]]
This claim (and implied claim w.r.t. RSS) is misleading. Whether true or
not depends on one's notion of 'syndication'. Since the CDF example I
link to above is couched in terms of news articles, I find it a hard
claim to believe.
The creation of scriptingNews was directly influenced by both CDF and
MCF specs. I believe the ommissions from the Scripting News
RSS timeline have fueled the (very frustrating) debate about renaming
"RSS 1.0" and "RSS-Classic". Intentionally or otherwise, implementors
new to the scene may be unaware of the history. This can give people the
impression that scriptingNews was the source of many of the ideas found
in the various flavours of RSS. I don't believe that to be the case.
The Web tends to remember this sort of thing. Here are some of things
documents I found (using Google and Google cache[5]) while checking up
on the history of all
this...
January 1997, Dave Winer was proposing MCF-based additions to the Apple
'Finder'. http://www.its.unimelb.edu.au/hma/pub/macscrpt/d112/0088.html
Same month, an article in MacWeek,
http://www.access.ch/power/infoservices/MacWeek/MacWeek270197.html#Index22
discussed Netscape's acquisition of Netsape's HotSauce/MCF technology
(along with Guha).
[[
The company said it will incorporate Meta Content Format (MCF) into a
future version of Constellation, Netscape's
enterprise-oriented Internet-on-the-desktop technology first announced
in November (see 11.25.96, Page 91).
]]
A few months later, DaveNet featured some observations on 'Push' (then a
fashionable buzzword), http://davenet.userland.com/1997/04/25/NoTheoriesNeeded
[[
Fri, Apr 25, 1997; by Dave Winer.
Microsoft and Pointcast, who aligned in March on a standard
way of describing dynamic web content called Channel Definition Format,
or CDF, seem to be going their own ways now. The docs for CDF are
scanty, we haven't received verification from Microsoft that we're
correctly supporting it, I suspect that's not possible because CDF is
still being specified.
And even if CDF were complete, I have trouble seeing the
substance. I've identified three dynamic pages on the DaveNet site,
described in a CDF file. Can any software read this file and do
something interesting with it?
[...]
]]
Incidentally, a copy of an early CDF spec is available at
http://www.scripting.com/midas/cdf.html
Investigating http://www.scripting.com/midas/ we learn that
[[
UserLand is working on both sides of the Meta
Content Format spec -- in content tools and in browsers.
]]
which leads us to http://www.scripting.com/midas/mcf.html
(dated Wednesday, August 27, 1997.). Dave writes...
[[
MCF and UserLand
UserLand is working on both sides of the Meta Content Format spec
-- in content tools and in browsers.
I had a few hours on Christmas morning to do some experimenting and
planning. It looks like there's an opportunity for us to add to the MCF
standard. It also looks like it's happening, so it's time to jump on the
bandwagon and start digging...
]]
So I have to say I fell off my chair when I read this. After weeks of
being accussed on bandwagon jumping, theft, lies and worse, this was an
interesting find. Dave jumped the MCF bandwagon rather than vice versa.
There's a nice MCF representation of Dave's site at
http://www.scripting.com/frontier/siteMap.mcf incidentally.
[[
;This MCF File was generated by Userland Frontier 4.2 Mac
-1/20/97; 10:30:40 AM
]]
An example entry looks like this:
unit: "http://www.scripting.com/frontier/admin/credits.html";
name: "Frontier: Credits Page"
authorIndividual: #"dwiner@well.com"
authorOrganization: #"UserLand Software"
firstPublicationDate: "12/29/96"
lastRevisionDate: "12/29/96"
size: "8323"
parent: #"www.scripting.com/frontier/admin/"
Sound familiar? It ought to...
Returning to the detail of the MCF and Userland page, we learn something
of Userland's MCF implementation and plans, including some downloadable
code (ftp://ftp.scripting.com/userland/snippets/utilities.buildMCF.sit.hqx)
that integrates MCF export capabilities into Frontier. Go Dave! :-)
We learn more about this work from the transcripts of 'DaveNet live',
still in '97. These are still online at
http://167.216.203.60/Events/ny97/Transcripts/53.html and include some
observations on "Push" technologies of the time, including MCF and
CDF...
Excerpts:
[[
DaveNet Live
Dave Winer, UserLand Software, moderator
[...]
Mr. Winer:
CDF, we've already implemented CDF support. CDF is an awful lot like
MCF, which was a proposal that Apple had out
there, which basically describes pieces of a Web site. So you can say,
we actually implemented it, and my Web site is a
CGF channel now. So, I found three pages on my Web site that will change
on a periodic basis. All the rest of the pages
pretty much survive. I'll point to those pages from these dial-up
pages. It's such an incredibly immature idea - that I
mean the Microsoft people I sent them an e-mail, to Ben,who is the lead
developer on Internet Explorer and to Don,
who is in charge of their Macintosh stuff, and said, "Hey, CDF?" And
that e-mail must have gone everywhere in
Microsoft, and I got back incredibly enthusiastic response. "Wow! We
can't believe it." Of course, at that point we had
completed our application of CDF. So I think a part of their disbelief
was that they didn't think it was possible for
anybody to do it.
And so we very quickly got it together, finished it, and then sent them
back for pointers, and said, "Would you please
take a look at this, and tell us if we've actually got it right?" And I
never heard anything back from them after that point.
So, my guess is that they don't know what this stuff is used for. I
don't know what it's used for, but we support it,
okay?
Audience: [inaudible]
Mr. Winer: That's out of date. Our MCF file is not something we build on
a regular basis.
Audience: [inaudible]
Mr. Winer: Absolutely. The way we have it we have the CDF stuff hooked
in so that every time the site gets built that
page gets regenerated. So it's not hard to do that, but MCF seems to be
dead. It was only being kept alive, I think,
because Apple was promoting it. It was in that magic list of things that
they're no longer doing.
Audience: [inaudible]
Mr. Winer: Perhaps, and maybe MCF will happen anyway. I would add it to
the list of things we support, but I think it's
so much like CDF that it's the same thing fundamentally. It's a site
description thing, okay?
Pointcast was one of the sponsors of CDF when they had this big press
conference down in Los Angeles in Internet
World. They were on stage with Microsoft saying, "Rah, rah, CDF we
support it all the way." I had a talk with Chris
Hassett, CEO of Pointcast, and he said the same thing. So we called up
the product manager, and asked him that we
would like to make sure our stuff works with Pointcast. He told us he
would get back to us. [...]
]]
All this speaks for itself, but lets join the dots here.
On the basis of these various observations, we have two
traditions, both rooted in Guha's MCF work.
MCF > CDF > scriptingNews > RSS 0.91 > RSS-Classic
//
MCF > XML-MCF > RSS 0.90 > RSS 1.0
Although much of the above is in DW's own words, a different perspective
can be found at http://davenet.userland.com/1999/06/16/aFaceOffWithNetscape
tells of a face-off with Netscape, and the (familar sounding) threat of
a forking of the specs, with the new arrivals (Netscape) failing to
inter-operate with the long-established scriptingNews:
[[
Wed, Jun 16, 1999; by Dave Winer.
As I've written previously, when Netscape came out with their
web syndication format in March, it was too
good an opportunity to pass on. We had been working
in this area for over a year, on two of three sides of the
problem, as a content developer, publishing an XML-syndicated
channel; and as a tools vendor, providing software to
organizations that develop web news channels.
[...]
Enter Netscape. With some fanfare, in March they introduced
RSS, and quickly there were a hundred compatible channels.
[...]
Outcome
I hope Netscape will now work with us so this world doesn't
have to fragment. I think we were generous by holding back on
our format to see if we could work with Netscape. We published
our format publicly in 1997, long before Netscape entered this
area. We informed many Netscape people about it.
Unfortunately most, if not all of them no longer work at
Netscape. To the current management at Netscape, whoever
they may be, let's work together.
]]
To stress my point once more. The RSS 1.0 proposal did not appear from
out of nowhere, but is routed in 5 years work in this area. The
RSS 1.0 proposers did not swoop in from nowhere to steal the 'RSS'
acronym. Whichever way you trace RSS history (via scriptingNews /
CDF) or directly back through Netscape's acquisition of Apple's
MCF, it isn't hard to figure out who jumped whose bandwagon. I don't
make these points to embarrass Dave (I don't believe that's even
possible), but to put a stop to a pointless debate.
"RSS 1.0" and "RSS-Classic" work just fine. Let's get back to the real
work...
Dan
[1] http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/sept00/0211.html
[2] http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/sept00/0268.html
and http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/sept00/0271.html
[[
From: Dave Winer (dave@userland.com)
Date: Wed Sep 13 2000 - 15:23:49 PDT
Here's the deal. Call it RSS 1.0. You win.
]]
[3] http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/aug00/0609.html
[4] http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/sept00/0215.html
http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/sept00/0224.html
[5] prefix URLs with
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache: if the older links break...