I was really hoping for good things from the RSS public mailing list, but like every RSS 2.0 mailing list before it, the RDF/Atom people have taken over and there's more links to the Atom wiki of late than anything that could be considered constructive. There does not appear to be a path forward, as nobody has the guts to stand up and tell the Atomites to get lost. As such, I've decided that I'm gonna work independently of that mailing list and create RSS documentation to help RSS users on The RSS Blog. Anything I create will be presented to Dave Winer and the RSS Advisory Board for approval. The first thing I would like to create is an RSS interop document that inherits RSS as-is, does not try to change it, and simply provides guidance to RSS developers when publishing and parsing RSS documents. Please feel free to suggest other things that we can work together on, to make RSS better. Comments of the line "use RDF" or "use Atom" will be deleted. Sorry, but there has to be a forum where people can discuss RSS without getting RDF and Atom jammed down their throat.
Last update: Friday, July 07, 2023 at 6:09 PM Eastern.
This blog has been published since July 1, 2004 (a span of 7,239 days).
-Mark
Mark,
Sam is founder and leader of an organization whose stated goal is to replace RSS 2.0. Can you say conflict of interest? Having him controlling the agenda on the mailing list, simply discredits the mailing list.
Randy
After monitoring the RSS Public mailing list and seeing the recent melt down I can understand your post here. You have a clear understanding of dave Winer's concerns over the foramt being compromised by excessive over-specification.
Rogers asked for a vote on the issues of multiple enclosures per item... attempting some progress towards a clarification or maybe just a "Best Practices" statement and the process went off the tracks... and apparently you went with it.
If Sam and James and others with some history with Atom "sell their ideas" then no work can be accomplihed there? I don't get that... but I'd respect your decision to work without having to sell them on anything. That's your choice. But you leave the only other active board member on that list without much support. Dave Winer has also made it difficult to understand why anyone might want that job... Rogers seems to be attempting to make RSS safe for developers as you are and deserves your support in that regard. If you disagree then try to fix that issue with the Board and get a a Board that can work together. I thought the proposal of two new members was abit odd but it made more sense after dave campaigned with some members to step down. A CTO of a subscription driven company and another corporate "high jacker" is asked to resign to make room for an aggregator developer and corpoarte feeder... seems fair to me(?).
"Will RSS decisions be made in a Corporate Board Room", Dave asks. Maybe... but there's still that voting process for adoption right? 1 vote of 9.
Whatever... get a board that Dave likes and get something happening on the ugly issues.
I can see that Sam's precision over the smallest details and desire to specify for every use case could drive someone crazy but leaving the Public mail list and starting your own effort seems counter productive to me. I hope you'll cool off and try to help Rogers make that process work as well towards "best practices" if NOT a small spec re-write... 2.0.2 and beyond. I know you could add more clarity in dark corners without breaking the existing spec. The grey areas are making behaviors that users won't understand. There should be some changes/clarifications allowed without the constant fear of a slippery slope towards the ruin of RSS 2.0, IMHO. Even Best Practices would indicate that some service (publish or consume) is "broken". I can't see the benefit to avoiding trying to indicate that any software is wrong when there was no clear langauge to help the developer.
I'd encourage you to "sell your ideas" and work with Rogers to get some developer guidelines created that help make RSS easier to implement and benefit users above the current practices... especially where there are cases where the ambiguities are making publishers and readers see bugs in the behavior they might reasonably expect for the technology.
Rogers three main questions around the grey areas remain and real progress could have been made in a few weeks to generate some Best Practices around these questions:
Randy
Randy,
I agree with you. Rogers has publically stated that he is no longer using RSS and now supports Atom. Having Atom evangelists on the board makes little sense to me.
Randy,
I agree with you. Rogers has publically stated that he is no longer using RSS and now supports Atom. Having Atom evangelists on the board makes little sense to me.