The RSS Advisory Board's charter stipulates that the chair serves a
two-year term that begins Feb. 1 of odd-numbered years. I'm interested
in continuing as chair for the next two years.

During that term, I'd like to see the board publish the RSS Profile
[1] and the clean rewrite of the RSS 2.0 Specification [2]. I believe
that following the RSS roadmap means freezing the RSS 2.0 elements and
attributes and all defined behavior, but does not require freezing the
language of the current spec.

However, as I hope board members have seen over the past year, I'm
pretty conservative in my approach to our mission. I'd rather work
through issues patiently and help incrementally where we can, which is
why I'm still puttering away on the spec rewrite one year after its
first draft.

1: http://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile
2: http://www.rssboard.org/rss-draft-1

If anyone else wants to run for chair, please announce within the next
week. A chair's election requires an absolute majority -- presently 7
out of 13 votes.

You got my vote!

I think in the next year we have to focus on the profile in order to
get it done without another year of delays. I think everybody would
like to see this and it could easily pass.

On the other hand, I think the draft spec is trouble and should be put
on hold until we have more community support.
MHO,

Randy


--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "rcade" <cadenhead@...> wrote:
>
> The RSS Advisory Board's charter stipulates that the chair serves a
> two-year term that begins Feb. 1 of odd-numbered years. I'm interested
> in continuing as chair for the next two years.
>
> During that term, I'd like to see the board publish the RSS Profile
> [1] and the clean rewrite of the RSS 2.0 Specification [2]. I believe
> that following the RSS roadmap means freezing the RSS 2.0 elements and
> attributes and all defined behavior, but does not require freezing the
> language of the current spec.
>
> However, as I hope board members have seen over the past year, I'm
> pretty conservative in my approach to our mission. I'd rather work
> through issues patiently and help incrementally where we can, which is
> why I'm still puttering away on the spec rewrite one year after its
> first draft.
>
> 1: http://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile
> 2: http://www.rssboard.org/rss-draft-1
>
> If anyone else wants to run for chair, please announce within the next
> week. A chair's election requires an absolute majority -- presently 7
> out of 13 votes.
>

I'd like to propose a small clarification to the spec to remove debate
in the community as to whether extension attributes are allowed in the
RSS spec. In the section title Extending RSS, I propose that we change
the sentence....

"A RSS feed may contain elements not described on this page, only if
those elements are defined in a namespace."

to

"A RSS feed may contain elements and attributes not described on this
page, only if those elements and attributes are defined in a namespace."

Looking for a second.
Thanks,

Randy Charles Morin
http://www.therssweblog.com

I second this proposal.

I was involved in RSS when namespaces were added to version 2.0 in
2002, though not as a board member (it didn't exist yet).

Dave Winer solicited the input of the development community through
his weblog and others, then added them with this explanation:

"I've added the section explaining how to extend RSS through
namespaces. I'm basically telling you to ask the W3C how namespaces
work, and do it the way they tell you to do it. I don't want to assume
the problem of documenting namespaces in the RSS spec."

http://www.scripting.com/2002/09/06.html#When:10:56:56AM

When namespaces were added, the spec linked to an RSS 2.0 sample file
that used them:

http://www.rssboard.org/rss-2-0#sampleFiles
http://static.userland.com/gems/backend/rssTwoExample2.xml

Part of the file:

<rss version="2.0"
xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule">

In the above, xmlns:blogChannel is a namespace attribute extending the
rss element.

Randy's proposed revision makes it clear that this is valid RSS. If
namespace attributes aren't valid RSS, every RSS feed that declares a
namespace in the rss element is invalid.

After wrestling with the issue on RSS-Public first in October and
again this month, I've concluded that this is an important and
necessary clarification.

--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "Randy Morin" <randy@...> wrote:
>
> I'd like to propose a small clarification to the spec to remove debate
> in the community as to whether extension attributes are allowed in the
> RSS spec. In the section title Extending RSS, I propose that we change
> the sentence....
>
> "A RSS feed may contain elements not described on this page, only if
> those elements are defined in a namespace."
>
> to
>
> "A RSS feed may contain elements and attributes not described on this
> page, only if those elements and attributes are defined in a namespace."
>
> Looking for a second.
> Thanks,
>
> Randy Charles Morin
> http://www.therssweblog.com
>

Now that the proposal has been seconded, we will discuss the issue for
seven days and then have seven days in which to vote. All votes and
voting deliberations should take place here on RSS-Board.

Just a small clarification. The attribute xmlns:blogChannel is not an
extension of RSS. The xmlns namespace is part of basic XML and RSS is
a dialect of XML, therefor xmlns and xml namespace prefix attributes
are not extensions.

Randy Charles Morin
http://www.therssweblog.com

--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "rcade" <cadenhead@...> wrote:
>
> I second this proposal.
>
> I was involved in RSS when namespaces were added to version 2.0 in
> 2002, though not as a board member (it didn't exist yet).
>
> Dave Winer solicited the input of the development community through
> his weblog and others, then added them with this explanation:
>
> "I've added the section explaining how to extend RSS through
> namespaces. I'm basically telling you to ask the W3C how namespaces
> work, and do it the way they tell you to do it. I don't want to
assume
> the problem of documenting namespaces in the RSS spec."
>
> http://www.scripting.com/2002/09/06.html#When:10:56:56AM
>
> When namespaces were added, the spec linked to an RSS 2.0 sample
file
> that used them:
>
> http://www.rssboard.org/rss-2-0#sampleFiles
> http://static.userland.com/gems/backend/rssTwoExample2.xml
>
> Part of the file:
>
> <rss version="2.0"
> xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule">
>
> In the above, xmlns:blogChannel is a namespace attribute extending
the
> rss element.
>
> Randy's proposed revision makes it clear that this is valid RSS. If
> namespace attributes aren't valid RSS, every RSS feed that declares
a
> namespace in the rss element is invalid.
>
> After wrestling with the issue on RSS-Public first in October and
> again this month, I've concluded that this is an important and
> necessary clarification.
>
> --- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "Randy Morin" <randy@> wrote:
> >
> > I'd like to propose a small clarification to the spec to remove
debate
> > in the community as to whether extension attributes are allowed
in the
> > RSS spec. In the section title Extending RSS, I propose that we
change
> > the sentence....
> >
> > "A RSS feed may contain elements not described on this page, only
if
> > those elements are defined in a namespace."
> >
> > to
> >
> > "A RSS feed may contain elements and attributes not described on
this
> > page, only if those elements and attributes are defined in a
namespace."
> >
> > Looking for a second.
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Randy Charles Morin
> > http://www.therssweblog.com
> >
>

> I'd like to propose a small clarification to the spec to remove debate
> in the community as to whether extension attributes are allowed in the
> RSS spec.

When this issue was first brought up, I was fairly sure that it was just
matter of poor wording, and the intention of the spec was almost certainly
to allow extension attributes as well as extension elements. However, I'm
not convinced that a clarification to the spec is a good idea, even if there
was no doubt whatsoever that this interpretation was correct. IMO the
political complications that arise from this kind of clarification (have
already risen in fact), far outweigh any benefits that will be gained from a
change in the spec.

As I understand it, the question we're trying to answer is: "Does the RSS
spec permit extension attributes on native RSS elements?" While that would
be nice to know, I think a far more useful question to answer is: "Will such
an extension attribute cause any problems for existing aggregators?" That's
exactly the sort of question that the profile was designed to answer. Why
can't we address the issue there? Why do we really need this addressed in
the spec?

Regards
James

PS: I'm copying this to rss-public since this issue is clearly of interest
to others not on the board and I would like to hear what they have to say
too.

--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "James Holderness" <j4_james@...> wrote:
> As I understand it, the question we're trying to answer is: "Does
> the RSS spec permit extension attributes on native RSS elements?"
> While that would be nice to know, I think a far more useful question
> to answer is: "Will such an extension attribute cause any problems
> for existing aggregators?" That's exactly the sort of question that
> the profile was designed to answer. Why can't we address the issue
> there? Why do we really need this addressed in the spec?

The reason it has to be addressed in the spec is because one namespace
has no bearing on another. We can't use potential interop problems as
the reason to tell namespace creators they ought to use (or not use)
namespace attributes.

An example: Garth Kidd created a Podcache namespace for better
BitTorrent-style delivery of podcasts.

http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/docs/podcache.html

The namespace works by extending the enclosure element:

<enclosure
   length="24986239" type="audio/mpeg"
   url="http://dallas.example.com/joebob_050689.mp3"
   podcache:length="193732"
   podcache:originalurl="http://dallas.example.com/123.mp3/"
/>

This causes no problems for anyone else. A podcasting client can
implement Kidd's namespace without affecting the implementations of
any other namespace.

So the choice before us, as I see it, is to either tell Kidd this is
valid RSS 2.0 or tell him it isn't.

James,
Politics aside, do you have a specific concern with the spec mod? Is
there a use case (RSS fragment) that describes your concern?
Thanks,

Randy Charles Morin
http://www.therssweblog.com

--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "James Holderness" <j4_james@...>
wrote:

Randy Morin wrote:
> Politics aside, do you have a specific concern with the spec mod? Is
> there a use case (RSS fragment) that describes your concern?

Nope. Technically I think the proposal makes sense. My concerns are entirely
political - essentially I don't want to get involved in a spec fight, which
is what this is coming to. I'm not going to vote against the proposal, but
I'm not going to vote for it either.

Regards
James

The seven-day voting period now begins on the proposal to add four
words to the RSS 2.0 specification to clarify whether extension
attributes are allowed to core RSS elements:

http://www.rssboard.org/news/165

There has been heavy discussion on RSS-Public about this issue, so I
encourage members to read it. Here's the place the discussions began:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-public/message/1311

You can vote Yes, No or Abstain.

I'm voting Yes on this proposal. I think it's the proper
interpretation of what the spec means regarding namespace support, and
the board's the proper place to address it.

The move will be controversial, but anything we do involving RSS 2.0
is contentious. If you read the 100+ messages posted the last week on
RSS-Public, I think you'll find that the political debate James
references boils down to two positions:

1. Nobody should speak with authority on the RSS spec.

2. Somebody should.

The board's been that somebody for five years, though we've used the
ability sparingly. I think we should decide what we think the spec
means, edit accordingly and take our lumps.

I'm voting yes also.

There's been little debate about whether this change is actually good
or bad, since most every agrees the change would help clarify things.
Further, some of the same people that don't want us to change the spec
are the people that complained it's not clear. If we don't change it,
they'll complain. If we change it, they'll complain. Seems like an easy
choice for me.
Thanks,

Randy Charles Morin
http://www.therssweblog.com


--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "rcade" <cadenhead@...> wrote:
>
> I'm voting Yes on this proposal. I think it's the proper
> interpretation of what the spec means regarding namespace support, and
> the board's the proper place to address it.
>
> The move will be controversial, but anything we do involving RSS 2.0
> is contentious. If you read the 100+ messages posted the last week on
> RSS-Public, I think you'll find that the political debate James
> references boils down to two positions:
>
> 1. Nobody should speak with authority on the RSS spec.
>
> 2. Somebody should.
>
> The board's been that somebody for five years, though we've used the
> ability sparingly. I think we should decide what we think the spec
> means, edit accordingly and take our lumps.
>

--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "rcade" <cadenhead@...> wrote:
>
> The seven-day voting period now begins on the proposal to add four
> words to the RSS 2.0 specification to clarify whether extension
> attributes are allowed to core RSS elements:
>
> http://www.rssboard.org/news/165
>
> There has been heavy discussion on RSS-Public about this issue, so I
> encourage members to read it. Here's the place the discussions began:
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-public/message/1311
>
> You can vote Yes, No or Abstain.
>
I also vote Yes.

rcade wrote:
> The seven-day voting period now begins on the proposal to add four
> words to the RSS 2.0 specification to clarify whether extension
> attributes are allowed to core RSS elements:
>
> http://www.rssboard.org/news/165
>
> There has been heavy discussion on RSS-Public about this issue, so I
> encourage members to read it. Here's the place the discussions began:
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-public/message/1311
>
> You can vote Yes, No or Abstain.

I vote yes.

As someone trying to ignore all the political bullshit surrounding the
topic, I believe the proposed change makes sense.

-Paul

The seven-day voting period now begins on the proposal to add four
words to the RSS 2.0 specification to clarify whether extension
attributes are allowed to core RSS elements:

http://www.rssboard.org/news/165

There has been heavy discussion on RSS-Public about this issue, so I
encourage members to read it. Here's the place the discussions began:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-public/message/1311

You can vote Yes, No or Abstain.

-- Eric Lunt
CTO, FeedBurner
eric@...
http://www.burningdoor.com/eric

> The seven-day voting period now begins on the proposal to add four
> words to the RSS 2.0 specification to clarify whether extension
> attributes are allowed to core RSS elements:
>
> http://www.rssboard.org/news/165
>
> There has been heavy discussion on RSS-Public about this issue, so I
> encourage members to read it. Here's the place the discussions began:
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-public/message/1311
>
> You can vote Yes, No or Abstain.

Abstain.

----- Original Message -----

From: rcade

To: rss-board@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 10:17 AM

Subject: [rss-board] Vote: Spec Clarification

The seven-day voting period now begins on the proposal to add four
words to the RSS 2.0 specification to clarify whether extension
attributes are allowed to core RSS elements:

http://www.rssboard.org/news/165

There has been heavy discussion on RSS-Public about this issue, so I
encourage members to read it. Here's the place the discussions began:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-public/message/1311

You can vote Yes, No or Abstain.

> The seven-day voting period now begins on the proposal to add four
> words to the RSS 2.0 specification to clarify whether extension
> attributes are allowed to core RSS elements:
>
> http://www.rssboard.org/news/165
>
> There has been heavy discussion on RSS-Public about this issue, so I
> encourage members to read it. Here's the place the discussions began:
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-public/message/1311
>
> You can vote Yes, No or Abstain.

Abstain.

-meg

Abstain.

On 5/30/07, Meg Hourihan <meg@...> wrote:
> > The seven-day voting period now begins on the proposal to add four
> > words to the RSS 2.0 specification to clarify whether extension
> > attributes are allowed to core RSS elements:
> >
> > http://www.rssboard.org/news/165
> >
> > There has been heavy discussion on RSS-Public about this issue, so I
> > encourage members to read it. Here's the place the discussions began:
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-public/message/1311
> >
> > You can vote Yes, No or Abstain.
>
> Abstain.
>
> -meg
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>


--
Cheers,

Jason Shellen

On behalf of the board, I bought the domain rssboard.com from its
current owner for $250 on Sedo.Com, a domain brokerage service:

http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/3220

Requests to rssboard.com and www.rssboard.com are forwarded to the
proper URL:

http://www.rssboard.org/

If anyone would like to pitch in towards the cost, send me an email or
post here, and I'll divide the cost among the coalition of the willing.

The board has no recurring expenses and no budget -- the web hosting
and domain renewal fees are negligible -- so I'm assuming we want to
handle occasional expenses by the chair in pass-the-hat manner. If I'm
wrong, let me know.

We should go to a membership model. Basically, any company or
individual can become a sponsoring member of the board for $100+/yr.
Just to clarify, sponsoring members wouldn't get a vote. Sponsoring
members would get a mention on the website.  I'd be in for $100.
My2cents,

Randy Charles Morin
http://www.therssweblog.com


--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "rcade" <cadenhead@...> wrote:
>
> On behalf of the board, I bought the domain rssboard.com from its
> current owner for $250 on Sedo.Com, a domain brokerage service:
>
> http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/3220
>
> Requests to rssboard.com and www.rssboard.com are forwarded to the
> proper URL:
>
> http://www.rssboard.org/
>
> If anyone would like to pitch in towards the cost, send me an email
or
> post here, and I'll divide the cost among the coalition of the
willing.
>
> The board has no recurring expenses and no budget -- the web hosting
> and domain renewal fees are negligible -- so I'm assuming we want to
> handle occasional expenses by the chair in pass-the-hat manner. If
I'm
> wrong, let me know.
>

Let me know how much you need. $50 is not unreasonable
for me to contribute.

Greg

--- rcade <cadenhead@...> wrote:

> On behalf of the board, I bought the domain
> rssboard.com from its
> current owner for $250 on Sedo.Com, a domain
> brokerage service:
>
> http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/3220
>
> Requests to rssboard.com and www.rssboard.com are
> forwarded to the
> proper URL:
>
> http://www.rssboard.org/
>
> If anyone would like to pitch in towards the cost,
> send me an email or
> post here, and I'll divide the cost among the
> coalition of the willing.
>
> The board has no recurring expenses and no budget --
> the web hosting
> and domain renewal fees are negligible -- so I'm
> assuming we want to
> handle occasional expenses by the chair in
> pass-the-hat manner. If I'm
> wrong, let me know.
>
>




________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Get the free Yahoo! toolbar and rest assured with the added security of spyware
protection.
http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/norton/index.php

... and thanks for the great pick-up

--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "rcade" <cadenhead@...> wrote:
>
> On behalf of the board, I bought the domain rssboard.com from its
> current owner for $250 on Sedo.Com, a domain brokerage service:
>
> http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/3220
>
> Requests to rssboard.com and www.rssboard.com are forwarded to the
> proper URL:
>
> http://www.rssboard.org/
>
> If anyone would like to pitch in towards the cost, send me an email
or
> post here, and I'll divide the cost among the coalition of the
willing.
>
> The board has no recurring expenses and no budget -- the web hosting
> and domain renewal fees are negligible -- so I'm assuming we want to
> handle occasional expenses by the chair in pass-the-hat manner. If
I'm
> wrong, let me know.
>

The proposal to revise the RSS specification has passed 5-1 with RSS
Advisory Board members Matthew Bookspan, Rogers Cadenhead, Christopher
Finke, Randy Charles Morin and Paul Querna voting in favor, Eric Lunt
voting against and members James Holderness, Meg Hourihan, Jenny
Levine and Jason Shellen abstaining.

The Extending RSS section of the specification has been clarified with
the addition of the words "and attributes" twice in the following
sentence:

"A RSS feed may contain elements and attributes not described on this
page, only if those elements and attributes are defined in a namespace."

No other changes were made. All edits to the specification are logged.
This revision of the document has the version number 2.0.9.

http://www.rssboard.org/news/171

----- Original Message -----

From: Randy Morin

To: rss-board@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 8:18 AM

Subject: [rss-board] Spec Clarification

I'd like to propose a small clarification to the spec to remove debate
in the community as to whether extension attributes are allowed in the
RSS spec. In the section title Extending RSS, I propose that we change
the sentence....

"A RSS feed may contain elements not described on this page, only if
those elements are defined in a namespace."

to

"A RSS feed may contain elements and attributes not described on this
page, only if those elements and attributes are defined in a namespace."

Looking for a second.
Thanks,

Randy Charles Morin
http://www.therssweblog.com

Appologies -- this had been sitting in an Outbox on an email client I
hadn't launched in a while. Please ignore. Thanks, -Jake

--- In rss-board@yahoogroups.com, "Jake Savin" <me@...> wrote:
>
> Seconded.
>
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: Randy Morin
>   To: rss-board@yahoogroups.com
>   Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 8:18 AM
>   Subject: [rss-board] Spec Clarification
>
>
>   I'd like to propose a small clarification to the spec to remove
debate
>   in the community as to whether extension attributes are allowed
in the
>   RSS spec. In the section title Extending RSS, I propose that we
change
>   the sentence....
>
>   "A RSS feed may contain elements not described on this page, only
if
>   those elements are defined in a namespace."
>
>   to
>
>   "A RSS feed may contain elements and attributes not described on
this
>   page, only if those elements and attributes are defined in a
namespace."
>
>   Looking for a second.
>   Thanks,
>
>   Randy Charles Morin
>   http://www.therssweblog.com
>

The RSS Best-Practices Profile, a set of recommendations for publishers
of RSS feeds and developers of software to read the feeds, has reached
a significant milestone in its development -- we've covered everything
that we wanted to include and the to-do list is now empty:

http://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile

The authors of the profile, which we began in March 2006, are James
Holderness, Randy Charles Morin, Geoffrey Sneddon and myself.

If you'd like to contribute before it's submitted to a vote of the
board, please join us in the final push on RSS-Public.

Randy Charles Morin and I are going to propose the RSS Profile to a
vote of the RSS Advisory Board next Monday. The effort to draft a set
of best practices guidelines for RSS 2.0 has been 18 months in the making:

http://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile

If you see any issues that should be addressed before the vote, or
there are changes you'd like us to consider, let us know on RSS-Public.