Re: RSS owns itself (was Re: [syndication] What did I get myself into?)

[Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>]

I'm sick as a dog, and therefore am existing in the rare state where
I don't care about the Send button ;)


RSS is a particularly bad example of failure to agree, for whatever
reason. The different factions have been co-existing with poor grace
for some time; I'm suggesting that perhaps the time has come for them
to accept the differences, let the market sort it out, and pool
resources where appropriate. Evangelizing syndication is one such
area (and quite appropriate for this list).

Dave, if this happens in a reasonable fashion, would you participate,
or at least point at such a resource when speaking about RSS?



On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 10:24:56AM -0700, Dave Winer wrote:
> Mark, I wanted to give this a fair amount of thought before posting, I did
> not hit the Send button right away. ;->
> 
> In my opinion, formats like RSS are nothing more than politics. Consider
> that there are many possible ways to syndicate Web content, even in XML, and
> XML is only one of the possible ways to do it. The value in a format like
> RSS is the agreement that it represents, however it came together, that
> coalesced it into one identifiable thing.
> 
> Now if you mean by not focusing on politics that we don't care who "owns"
> RSS, then right on, I'm behind you all the way. I don't want to own RSS,
> I've always said that I don't. RSS owns itself.
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Nottingham" <mnot@mnot.net>
> To: "James Shaw" <yahoo@coveryourasp.com>
> Cc: <syndication@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 6:47 PM
> Subject: Re: [syndication] What did I get myself into?!
> 
> 
> >
> >
> > 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/
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 
> 

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