Re: RSS 1.0 vs. RSS 0.9*

[David Megginson <david@megginson.com>]

Eric van der Vlist writes:

 > Do you think that it is a matter of "presentation" and that big
 > disclaimers that modules are only useful to perform "special" functions
 > would be enough or do we have to imagine other safeguards  ?

My recommendation would be not to create any official, WG-approved
modules at all for a while.  Give RSS 1.0 a year to stabilise and
become more popular, while individual parties publish their own
(i.e. not WG-approved) modules.  At the end of the year, find the the
minimum number of new features necessary to resolve (say) 50 percent
of complaints from users and reviewers, and standardise those (and
*only* those), ignoring any parts that do not actually resolve
complaints.  Wait another year and repeat.

Basically, when someone asks "what is RSS?", you want to be able to
say "just read this short spec and you're done."  Unfortunately,
success is a very addictive drug -- just look at the W3C, constantly
trying to recapture that first wonderful high from the success of XML
1.0 (I need to write ... I need to write just one more spec ... JUST
ONE MORE SPEC!!!).  Don't go there.  Just say no.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/