Sunday, June 29, 2003

Dave Winer asks: If you like using your aggregator to read RSS feeds, please find a way of saying that publicly. If you want mature steady leadership for the technology, find a way to say that too. If you don't want the pavement ripped up because a few competitors have fallen behind and want to create confusion until they can catch up, say so. We have a chance to escape from the usual messes that technology people create, but only if the users stand up for their right to choose, to switch, and for that to happen it must stay simple, it must get even simpler. . [Scripting News] I don't know the ins and outs of the arguments about RSS, Echo, and the people involved. I do know that RSS feeds have changed the way I see the net. I also know that they could change it even more if people who would benefit from them find out how easy is to publish or subscribe to one. I have been trying to convince people I work with to create feeds for new technical papers/preprints and for event announcements. It is not easy to convince them because "it could not be that simple/easy/effective." I fear that protocol instability would undermine these efforts. I worry about the costs that a new protocol would impose on the small, creative companies like Userland and Ranchero that I rely on for RSS support. There may be very good reasons for a new protocol, but as a user I don't see protocols as the main obstacle to the expansion of the medium. I've also seen too many instances in computing where so much effort was put into endless design iterations and internecine fights around a grand ideal that the ideal was buried by nimbler if not prettier alternatives. If even a fraction of the effort going now into protocol arguments were into convincing information producers and consumers to explore the tools already available, we might really get somewhere. 9:49:13 PM