Re: [syndication] What did I get myself into?!

[Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>]

James,

I sympathize. FWIW, my advice is to pick the format that works for
you, stick with it, and ignore the politics.

To the Syndication list: 

What say you? The next step in the RSS story seems to be
evangelization. It's obvious that we're at a stalemate re:
determining the 'real' owner of the RSS torch. Continuing to infight
serves no purpose, and as we see demonstrated so well here,
discourages the adoption of RSS as a format.

I propose that we (the members of this list) undertake to build a Web
site that explains the ins and outs of RSS, with the politics
relegated to ONE document (probably "the politics of RSS - choosing a
format"). Can we do this, in the interest of syndication?




On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 12:50:32AM -0000, James Shaw wrote:
> I've looked back at the recent posts, and I'm amazed what goes on 
> here and in the (as they're called here) "other" groups.
> 
> A few of you posted messages about me and my efforts with STORS.org 
> recently, so I thought I'd tell the short story. I write articles on 
> my ASP web site and publish them by submitting title, description, 
> URL and various other details to directory sites like aspin.com, 
> devdex.com, etc where they categorize them. Readers follow their 
> links to my site. OK, so that's where I'm coming from.
> 
> My gripe was that everyone's form was different, some you can't even 
> paste into! So on April 19th I proposed a *very* simple idea of 
> everyone using the same names for their form inputs. Within a week 
> there was an XML schema, a discussion list and a website.
> 
> No-one mentioned RSS, and development was accelerating. Now, 3 weeks 
> since the original form idea STORS.org publishes source code for 
> publishers to create an XML file and directory sites to read it when 
> the XML (or more likely a URL to the XML) is submitted on a standard 
> form.
> 
> More and more people offered to port my code to other languages and 
> platforms, and we were ready to make the big announcement that 
> STORS.org was live (scheduled for 2 days from now). And then I get an 
> email from Alis.
> 
> Much head scratching and frantic reading about RSS ensued. The 3 main 
> people behind STORS, me Steve Smith (ASPAlliance) and Pedro Pequeno 
> (Aspin) decided to change tack and instead use the established RSS, 
> which by all accounts was extensible enough even if we wanted a few 
> tweaks.
> 
> 2 days later and I'm stunned to see the political nightmare we've 
> stepped into. I've subscribed to 4 discussion lists so far. This one, 
> reallySimpleSyndication, rss2 and rss-dev. 
> 
> I'd really like to keep the momentum going and get my new site up 
> with code for everyone to use. Quickly. I'm not sure I want to go 
> back in the archives to find out where the split(s) occured, or why. 
> 
> I guess I was just hoping that a 2 year old effort was slick, 
> polished, with lots of documentation, sample code in every 
> conceivable language and more to the point, an "RSS.org" that was 
> running it. (Actually the RDF Site Summary 1.0 docs are very 
> impressive)
> 
> What am I missing? Feel free to email me offlist if you prefer: 
> james@coveryourasp.com
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 
> 

-- 
Mark Nottingham
http://www.mnot.net/