Right, and Wrong, about Formats
Scoble talks about syndication technology, referencing this post by DeWitt Clinton:
Users don’t care about specs, or arguments about formats. When you understand that you’ll understand how RSS got so big in the first place. Dave Winer evangelized RSS by building a publishing tool (Manila and later Radio UserLand) and an aggregator (Radio UserLand and later Share Your OPML.
Where’s the Atom publishing tool and aggregator that demonstrates Atom’s superiority?
Makes me wonder whether Robert got through more than the first paragraph of the post. Two thirds of the way down, DeWitt says:
Put it this way -- I couldn’t be doing half of the work that I’m doing right now on search syndication without Atom. Sending back search results snippets over RSS is one thing. Syndicating rich search content is an entirely different thing, and that requires a non-lossy syndication format.
My recommendation to application developers today is to use Atom 1.0, not RSS, as the basis for your content syndication.
The tools for Atom that demonstrate it's superiority are exactly what DeWitt said: they're all the tools and services being built up around micro-formats. Now, it didn't need to be this way - RSS could have been that spec. Sadly, Dave Winer wouldn't allow for that. For reasons understood only by Dave, he thinks that the lossy nature of RSS is a feature. When people on the RSS Advisory Board disagreed with him, he called their employer (note the resignations). When that wasn't an option, he tried threatening someone else with a lawsuit. Meanwhile, his enablers - like Scoble - say nothing. RSS could have been the unitary spec had Dave not been a complete jerk, and people like Scoble bear some responsibility for that by never, ever calling him on his BS.
Comments
That's a demo?
[Robert Scoble] July 4, 2006 20:33:00.318
And people say I live in an echo chamber. That's not a demo that my dad can look at and use.
We need a killer app and making engineers' lives easier isn't it.
As to poking Dave about that, well, I don't agree with you. Everyone hates how Dave runs things. Well, then, do an end run around him. But that REQUIRES A DEMO!!!
Good enough
[Sam Ruby] July 4, 2006 22:16:01.031
RSS 2.0 appears to be good enough for this weblog.
Re: Right, and Wrong, about Formats
[ James Robertson] July 4, 2006 22:18:30.501
Comment by James Robertson
Robert,
The "demo" is feeds that aren't screwed up. The demo is not having stupid interop issues due to Dave's intransigence. You might recall this posting I made a long, long time ago - at first, I thought Atom was an utter waste of time. Gradually, I saw what an utterly corrosive, mean-spirited, hard to work with person Winer is, and it dawned on my why Atom came to pass - because the people working with it tried to talk to Dave first, and Dave wouldn't budge - being broken was not only good enough for him, it was somehow preferable. Quick - is it possible to have more than one enclosure (podcast, vlog, etc) in a post? Who knows? The spec doesn't say, and Dave thinks that the ambiguity is a good thing.
It's not about how Dave "runs things". It's about how he deals with technology issues when he decides that he or his ideas are being dissed. Go read some of his more *cough* useful *cough* comments on the RSS Advisory Board mailing list sometime.
As to doing an "end run" around Dave - you have no idea what you are talking about. If you create an aggregator, you have to support RSS, period. And OPML, god help you. So when you hit interop problems, because the specs suck eggs, there's no real solution. You can do what most aggregator developers did back in 2002-2004 - make a guess, and then live with the results. With Atom you don't have those problems, because the spec is explicit. Dave could have addressed that, but he was too busy being intransigent - for no good reason.
There's no real solution?
[Randy Charles Morin] July 4, 2006 23:46:14.490
James said: So when you hit interop problems, because the specs suck eggs, there's no real solution.
I disagree. There is a real solution. Raise the issue on the RSS Advisory Board mailing list, get the issue documented and tell everybody who isn't complying that the RSS Advisory Board says jump like this.
[Eye Roller] July 5, 2006 7:48:34.575
Randy... then watch Dave link to someone who'll bash you by proxy for deigning to listen to the no longer existant RSS Advisory Board. You just can't win. Cut your losses and deal with people who are at least willing to listen.
Eye Roller is on point
[ James Robertson] July 5, 2006 8:46:43.906
Comment by James Robertson
The advisory board can - at best - make suggestions. That's not the same as having an actual spec to point at. Screw up Atom, and you can be proven wrong. With RSS, you can always find a mudfight, because there is no definitive answer...