I noticed that Rogers Cadenhead has started a mailing list to discuss nailing down ambiguities in the RSS 2.0 spec.  After reading Dare's rebuttal to Jon Udell, it's obvious that the most controversial piece of Echo is the syndication format.  I haven't seen anybody arguing against a new weblog API or an archive format (though according to Dare, the archive format could be the same as the syndication format).  In the two links that Dare pointed to, I identified three problems with RSS 2.0:

1. The spec's ambiguous about what can go into <description>, in particular, the practice of putting in escaped HTML is considered a bad idea.  Tim Bray endorses either plain text or well formed xhtml; both seem like reasonable options.
2. The handling of relative URIs needs to be clarified.
3. It's not clear whether the <link> tag should be used for a permalink or an external link.

When I realized that, I wondered what the controversy was about - it seems like these issues could be ironed out fairly quickly and Echo could get on with putting together a weblogging API. 

Dare also mentions politics as being a driver behind Echo.  Evidently, this is what the controversy's about.  I think that it's a terrible thing to even tacitly admit this sentiment into your mission.  I've never yet found software that can fix interpersonal relationships.  When all's said and done and Echo is a reality, the same people will still be around, disliking each other.