Fw: RSS 1.0 vs. RSS 0.9*

[Dave Winer <dave@userland.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Winer" <dave@userland.com>
To: "Matt Sergeant" <matt@sergeant.org>
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: RSS 1.0 vs. RSS 0.9*


> You raise quite a few questions -- I don't care to examine which is a
> "better" base. If 0.91 had not happened, I'd either give my format a
> different name, other than RSS, or I'd be compatible with the latest prior
> version, which was 0.91. Just because a very small group of people feel
> something is "better" doesn't give them power to make others adopt their
> point of view. They may believe they have that power, there's no force
> behind the belief. (This is one of the major disconnects of *this* mail
> list, the belief that there are hordes of developers just waiting to adopt
> whatever decisions come. The evidence is pretty clear that very few are
> waiting.)
>
> Ultimately I think what's going to matter is the utility of features that
go
> beyond 0.91, Megginson gives the RDF guys some really bad advice, to wait
to
> deploy their modules. If their format is to have a chance, they have to
> hurry, there's no time to waste. 0.92 significantly raises the bar,
without
> the complexity of modules, RDF, namespaces, and is compatible with 0.91
(ie
> a 0.91 feed is also a 0.92 feed).
>
> I'd suggest doing the A-B comparison. The RDF-based format plus all its
> modules vs 0.92. I think this will also make clear that the path that XML
is
> going down is needlessly complex. What's needed is good solid
user-oriented
> design and a willingness to work with others, not a mechanism for people
to
> work independently because they can't work together. A difference in
> philosophy that yields different a quality of result for users and content
> people.
>
> And yes, we have built an application that uses all but one of the new
> features in 0.92, and I think it's going to enlarge the utilization of
this
> technology by several orders of magnitude, even in beta it has. Instead of
> four or five aggregators, there are 39 running at this moment, and we
> haven't started promoting yet. Here's a list of their 100 favorite feeds:
>
> http://www.ourfavoritesongs.com/
>
> That page is updated every hour. I believe that all these 100 feeds are
> either 0.91 or 0.92.
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matt Sergeant" <matt@sergeant.org>
> To: "Dave Winer" <dave@userland.com>
> Cc: "XML-Dev (E-mail)" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
> Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 8:16 AM
> Subject: Re: RSS 1.0 vs. RSS 0.9*
>
>
> > On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Dave Winer wrote:
> >
> > > 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.
> >
> > Umm, is 0.91 backwards compatible with 0.9 ?
> >
> > FWIW, 1.0 *is* backwards compatible with 0.9, just not backwards
> > compatible with 0.91. This was because (I assume) the guys behind 1.0
> > decided 0.9 was a better base design to start from.
> >
> > Will we be seeing 0.92 feeds just because Frontier will release new code
> > to support it, or are you aware of people actively implementing 0.92
based
> > code for the popular web languages out there?
> >
> > Matt.
> >
>