Re: RFC 2: Branching RSS

[Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>]

Rael Dornfest <rael@oreilly.com> wrote:

> : ** Freezing RSS
> :
> : RSS is declared frozen at 0.91. Everyone is asked not to develop any new
> : formats with the RSS name. RSS 0.91 is documented through a collaborative
> : effort on behalf of the Syndication list, based on Dave Winer's
> : version. It
> : will be put at a neutral address such as <http://purl.org/rss/0.91/>. The
> : specification will maintain a copyright notice that allows it to be copied
> : in whole or in part. It can include pointers to other branches of RSS
> And this _must_ be done for 0.9 as well; there is a lineage here and to
> ignore it is to leave lots of dangling wobbly bits.

Yes, sorry if this wasn't clear. What I meant is that RSS 0.9 and 0.91 both
live on as RSS. Everything else, however, must take a different (but
potentially similar) name.

> : UserLand will rename the format used in their software as well as the
> 
> I will once again reiterate the importance of having this come from the 0.9x
> community.  The members of reallySimpleSyndication are a perfect start; drop
> in some governance to afford ordered decision-making, and we have a
> situation where both sides' interests are decently represented.

Yes, I'd love to see this as an agreement between two communities.
Unfortunately, I see no way of getting a response from the 0.9x community so
I didn't want to place restrictions on them. However, if they have a way of
"ratifying" the proposal, I'd love to include them in it.

> : No party will extend RSS 0.90/1 with new features (new elements, etc.)
> : without using a new name. Changes currently in use (such as
> : removing element
> : length restrictions, etc.) will continue to be allowed.
> 
> I'm assuming you mean that 0.91 is frozen per Dave's spec rather than
> Netscape's.  While I'm not sure how clean a break with the past this is, I
> leave this to the 0.91 developers (Userland and Netscape) to figure that bit
> out.  There's more on this and credit in my other posting.

No, I'm not saying this at all. All I'm saying is that people shouldn't
start extending 0.91 without coming up with a new spec. However, I don't
want to prevent people from using 0.91 with, say, 20 items or a description
of longer than 5000. I don't see that as extending the spec really, I see it
as a legitimate use of the format. Thus, I didn't want it to be a violation
of the agreement.

> : All parties agree to put the past fully behind us. Discussion of
> : events that
> : took place before agreement was reached will be off-topic on all
> : three mail
> : lists.
> 
> Save for learning purposes :-)

Uh oh, I smell an RSS-History branch! ;-) Just kidding.

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