Re: RSS 1.0 vs. RSS 0.9*

[Dave Winer <dave@userland.com>]

Sorry for being out of the loop here, some other stuff came up that kept my
focus elsewhere.

David, I don't see the boom in support for the RDF-based format. Further,
since it's not backward compatible with previous version, it would be better
to make that clear up front so that people don't have to wade through all
the docs and modules and other specs to find out that it actually isn't RSS
at all, in any technical sense. It would be as if I came out with XML 1.1
and dropped support for attributes and put them in a namespace. I'm sure
that wouldn't go over well with all the people who had deployed XML 1.0
apps, and it should be explained and disclaimed upfront, imho.

Anyway, since your argument is based on adoption, how about some numbers and
URLs. I'd like to see a list of RSS 0.91 sources that have switched to the
RDF-based format. I run one of the primary aggregators and haven't seen the
switchover that you have seen. Understand that there are thousands of feeds
in 0.91. Three or four in RDF is hardly a groundswell.

Anyway, Robin Cover said he's going to write up RSS 0.92, that's all I
wanted for now. The market will decide this one for sure. In a couple of
months there will lots of 0.92 feeds, then we can talk again. Learning to
play a rough game, that's OK, I've done it before, but I thought open
development processes were different somehow than the paranoid slugfests in
the commercial software world

Dave


----- Original Message -----
From: "David Megginson" <david@megginson.com>
To: "XML-Dev (E-mail)" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 4:21 AM
Subject: RSS 1.0 vs. RSS 0.9*


> Matt Sergeant writes:
>
>  [in response to Dave Winer writing on RSS 0.92]
>
>  > All in all, it gains most people nothing. I for one have moved on
>  > to RSS 1.0, which by the use of namespaces has allowed me to build
>  > an entire slashdot-like web site around the format, using standard
>  > vocabularies.  When I need an author on each item, I use dc:creator
>  > from the Dublin Core. When I need a date, I can also use Dublin
>  > Core. For rich descriptions I can use dc:description with an
>  > xhtml-basic content. For my purposes, RSS 1.0 rocks. Note that none
>  > of these additions required me to write a new spec.
>
> I agree with Matt.  RSS 0.9* was simple enough to get people hooked on
> a particular kind of information exchange (pretty-much headlines and
> links) and was one of the greatest XML success stories, but it
> wouldn't scale for other kinds of syndication.  RSS 1.0 is complicated
> enough that it might scare people away, but it will scale better.
>
> Personally, I tend to err on the side of simplicity, but the proof is
> in the implementations: the number of RSS 1.0 feeds (both converted by
> a middle party or encoded by the source) is multiplying rapidly.  I
> have a small selection of RSS 1.0 feeds listed at
>
>   http://www.xmlnews.org/RSS/content.html
>
> including feeds from ITN and Reuters Health, but there are many, many
> more out there, and new ones are appearing regularly.  Obviously, the
> extra complexity in RSS 1.0 hasn't been enough to scare away
> implementors, and the RSS 1.0 WG has hit a sweet spot between
> simplicity and functionality.  Kudos.
>
> Dave (Winer), I shared some of your reservations about RSS 1.0 at the
> start, but given the proof of RSS 1.0's rapid adoption rate, I'd
> suggest that it's time now to bow out gracefully and admit you were
> wrong.  I had to do just that when I gave up my initial opposition to
> XML and wrote AElfred, and again when I abandoned dozens of my initial
> design proposals for SAX, and again when I gave up my opposition to
> Namespaces and became an advocate, and so on and so on.  Hell, I'm
> probably wrong now, too (let's get that out of the way in advance this
> time).
>
> That said, the RSS 1.0 WG is now busying itself creating new add-on
> modules, just like the XHTML people, and that's a BAD move: people
> will (incorrectly) think that they need to learn and support all the
> modules to support RSS, just as people think that they need to learn
> and support XSL, XML-Schemas, XLink, XInclude, etc. etc. etc. to
> support XML.  I agree with the Kent Beck and the other XP people on
> this point -- never add new functionality in anticipation, but wait
> until people are screaming so loudly that you can no longer ignore
> them.
>
>
> All the best,
>
>
> David
>
> --
> David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
>            http://www.megginson.com/