Aaron says:

> That's one point of view. Another would be that
> Dave has done had some well-intentioned yet
> dangerous attempts to turn RSS from RDF Site
> Summary to Really Simple Syndication and an
> independent group of developers from around
> the world are doing their best to steer the ship
> back on course.

Regardless of what the letters in the RSS acronym
stand for, RSS has been "Really Simple Syndication"
for the past year or two. When I have asked
news-producing sites to consider syndicating their
news for Headline Viewer (www.headlineviewer.com),
I can point them to the Netscape document, and I
can show them some very _simple_ and very
_understandable_ example files. They see the existing
RSS as something very doable. In one great case I
recall that a site was able to start generating
RSS 0.91 in less than 15 minutes. This, to me,
indicates that the current format is something worth
sticking to.

Any successor to RSS must preserve this simplicity.

The new proposal is just too daunting for someone not
well versed in XML and in namespaces. There are too many choices and what I
have to call "excessive generality."

Jeff;

Jeff Barr - Home: 425-836-5624 Office: 425-936-3098
mailto:jeff@...
http://www.vertexdev.com/~jeff
http://jeffbarr.editthispage.com/
4610 191st Place NE. Redmond, WA


-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Swartz [mailto:aswartz@...]
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 9:13 AM
To: rss-dev@egroups.com
Subject: [RSS-DEV] Re: Survey for rss-dev people


Jeff Barr <jeff@...> wrote:

> Come on, this is absurd. I think its called blackmail.

Hmm, interesting opinion.

> Dave has done a lot to promote RSS and to protect it from well-intentioned
yet
> dangerous attempts to turn it from "Really Simple Syndication" to what I
have
> to now label "Really Complex Syndication".

That's one point of view. Another would be that Dave has done had some
well-intentioned yet dangerous attempts to turn RSS from RDF Site Summary to
Really Simple Syndication and an independent group of developers from around
the world are doing their best to steer the ship back on course.

Neither view is "right" -- they're just different. I think we should
acknowledge that.

> Dave picked up the ball that Netscape dropped, and he ran with it for a
long
> time. Now that he is close to the finish line you guys want to take the
ball
> from him, rename the game, and say that he cannot even take any credit
for
> the game he was playing in?

Here's my POV:

Netscape dropped the ball into the ocean of the Web. Dave was the first to
run and grab it, and he took it back with him to UserLand. A group of other
people want to take the ball back to the water to share with everyone. I say
we leave the ball alone and both go buy new ones to play with.

> There is no reason for RSS to die. It works well and serves a useful
purpose.

I don't want RSS to die, but I don't want anyone to own it either. The ball
analogy is very nice, we're playing tug of war over it -- why not just split
it into two. Each will be sort of like the original RSS, but also different.
There's no need to fight -- we can share.

--
Aaron Swartz |"This information is top security.
<http://swartzfam.com/aaron/>| When you have read it, destroy yourself."
<http://www.theinfo.org/> | - Marshall McLuhan


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