Diego, I'm inclined not to link to that.

Here's why -- what is that you support when you say you support Pie/Echo/Atom?

My rebuttal would be that you're bending over backwards to please people who intimidate instead of create. Let them actually ship something before they evangelize, and then don't do it by intimidating, do it by creating opportunity.

Another point, and please don't take this personally. Why should anyone care if you support RSS? It's a huge format. Very broadly supported. That would be like me saying I support Toyota. What would it mean? Not very much.

Help RSS, that would be great, but that comes in the form of actions, not proclamations.

There's no reason the two have to conflict at all. After all, PAW is going to be used for things you'd never use RSS for (like posting to weblogs), and RSS is a fantastic syndication format.

Oh, which reminds me, I've syndicated your feed to Livejournal (although I'm the only reader there at the moment). You can see the feed at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/d2r/

and see it in use on my 'friends' page here:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/friends/news

(of course, depending on when you look, your latest post might not be on the front page)

Dave,

You don't have to link to it--this is just my opinion. I write what I think, I don't write to get linked. My position is quite unpopular, since I don't get into the argument. I'm not interested in arguing.

Regarding "bending over backwards"--I'm not. I truly believe that Pie/Echo/Atom has the *potential* to solve many of the interoperability problems that exist. You might say (and rightly so) that those interoperability problems shouldn't exist if people had agreed on using RSS 2.0 properly in the first place. But the problems *do* exist. For whatever reason (or non-reasons) people can't agree on using proper RSS 2.0. They can't be *forced* to do so, they have to agree on their own. So if they will be more inclined to follow a new spec, fine. If it will remove some of the permutations that exist, it will be good. Would it be better if the wheel didn't have to be reinvented? Of course it would. But it didn't happen that way.

So to answer your question, specifically: "what is that you support when you say you support Pie/Echo/Atom?". What I support is the idea that at a minimum *some* of the permutations that I currently have to deal with (as a developer) will go away, and that new functionality can be widely supported because of that agreement between all parties.

You do have a point with: "Let them actually ship something before they evangelize". I think that the Pie/Echo/Atom effort has been a bit too aggressive in creating mindshare before being finished (not sure how intentional this was though). But I think (as I've stated before) that closure is being reached, which should solve that problem.

As far as "actions, not proclamations" is concerned, I can't do anything *else* except: a) use it, b) go help with the spec, and c) talk about it on- or off-line. Clearly you meant something else to the comment to my other post, I'm open to ideas.

Regardless. As you said, why should anyone care if I do any of that? They shouldn't. *I* care, because RSS helps me create good, usable software that interoperates well. And I hope that Pie/Echo/Atom will also help in this. That's why I support both. And that's all that really matters to me.

Andrew, thanks for the comment--and glad to see others agree. :)

Andrew, PEW has nothing over RSS in that, the MetaWeblog API allows posting, and even better, it's shipping now, you could actually use it with real weblog software right now. It's funny how much better imaginary software seems.

Diego, I didn't mean anything else, just that statements of support are fairly meaningless, actions of support mean something. Help write some specs, help someone bring an application online, those all mean something.

Anyway, I don't think inventing a new format can make the world simpler, in fact it can't help but make it more complex, unless RSS were to somehow disappear because of PEW, a concept which all my years in the software business have beaten out of me. One of my investors, in 1983, asked me if I thought Apple would die soon. I said it sure looks that way. Everyone was saying it would. All the dealers, all the developers, certainly all the press people. He said billion-dollar companies don't disappear. He had much more experience than I did. He was right too.

RSS is a billion-dollar format. If you objectively look at all the content that flows through it you'll see that, like Apple in 1983, it can't be stopped. It doesn't matter who wants to stop it.

So your position is hardly news. Even the most vociferous PEW advocate will have to adopt your position whether they know it or not.

It's funny how Bill Gates never wanted to make Apple disappear, btw. And I note that Novell is still around. And I read the News.Com article on Netscape.Com. This shit never dies.

I still like what you do, and I know you don't write to get pointed to. Keep it that way. ;->

Funny how the brain works; when I read Andrew's comment I immediately thought about posting *comments*, rather than posting entries or media. Maybe Andrew was referring to doing direct post of feed entries, rather than the marshalling involved in metaWeblog? (Just to clarify, Metaweblog uses the RSS 2.0 entry format, a bit of marshalling is needed to pipe the post over XML-RPC).

> Diego, I didn't mean anything else, just that
> statements of support are fairly meaningless,
> actions of support mean something. Help write
> some specs, help someone bring an application
> online, those all mean something.
Ok. Thanks for the clarification. I do subscribe to the non-vapor idea, and it applies to this too.

Well done Diego. Winer is such an unbelievable hypocrite. To hear him call everyone else the intimidators is nothing short of appalling.

To then see him go on about ship first, evagelize later is *exactly* why not to do it. That's what a vendor does when it wants to try to extert unbalanced control over a market, exactly how he applied his bullying tactics on RSS. As a result the format he forked isn't capable of growth (for a variety of reasons, some of them technical).

As for billion dollar markets and shameless namedropping of unrelated people, companies or products, please, give us a break. We're not going to be dazzled by the bullshit anymore.

Man, you can't even post good things about RSS without getting flamed by Winer.

what exactly is PEW? what is it an acronym for?

Diego - right on. I think we should do our best to support what's deployed today and whatever it may evolve into. There doesn't have to be any conflict.

I love the pics on your site today Brian.

http://brian.carnell.com/articles/2003/08/000008.html

Make love not war.

And have a nice day. (You too Kearney, I am dazzled by your bullshit too.)

Let's face it, Winer is right on many levels, whether you want to call his occasional exaggerations 'bullshit' or not. That's not to say everyone else is wrong, of course.

You can look at a specification like HTML to get hindsight.

Back in the days of the drafting of HTML 2, how many alternative formats actually saw the light of day? A few were bubbling around, by people who saw HTML as limiting, and so forth, but what eventually happened was that companies like Netscape and Microsoft simply added their own 'extensions' to HTML. Why? Because creating their own standard from scratch would have turned the Web into a multi-standard nightmare when it could least afford it. I believe that 'breaking the spec' of RSS is far better than creating another standard from scratch. Perhaps within the next year or two, sources and weblogs will be different enough to warrant a new schema (your PDF to my HTML).. but now? Necho is almost RSS 'done a slightly different way'.

RSS is like the HTML of 93/94/95. It's not perfect, but it works, and it's very widely used. Creating a new format is noble in many ways but, say, like SVG compared to Flash.. it's just going to sit in the sidelines used by a few blogging zealots or simply be supported 'alongside RSS'.. so why now?

Of course, perhaps the pickup of Necho will be particularly rapid in this fast-changing Web world we now live in.. but I remain pessimistic of such an enthusiastic uptake outside of the small group currently surrounding the spec.