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DRAFT: Guidelines for successor(s) to RSS 0.91
RSS 0.91 frozen Earlier this evening I modified the RSS 0.91 specification to use the copyright we used for XML-RPC. Inspired by the IETF, it allows the spec to serve for a baseline for further evolution. It could fork now, and maybe it will. At least we have a decent doc for the baseline. From this point the only changes that will be made to the spec are clarifications and mistake fixes, and those changes will be very carefully considered. The role of magic Getting this document together, describing the current practice of RSS, was relatively easy, now the next steps also have to be easy and possibly fun, or we either fork or freeze, imho. Forking wouldn't be so terrible, but freezing would be a shame. We'll need some magic to get consensus on a set of new features, but I've seen it happen before, so I am hopeful that we will work together productively and learn from each other and build new systems that do things that writers and technologists want to do. Philosophies I urge you to be flexible, and understand the goals of other people. When possible adopt a couple of philosophies. First, "I want to do it the way you want to." So if someone proposes an element that you think is too weird, try to see it from their point of view, and then ask yourself if you could support it anyway. The second philosophy is the corny "Ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet." If you're going to participate in this process, remember the whole of it, not just your interests. Any progress in RSS, no matter how small, is a victory for the Internet, again imho. Practice Talking with a reporter for a print pub this morning, I asked when his piece would run and he said "You're going to laugh, it's November." As requested, I laughed, but not for the reasons he thought I would. I think "Internet speed" was a phenomenon of the past. Now we have to move carefully and in a considered way. If your ideas are good enough to be considered by the very busy people who are around here, people whose minds are busting with ideas too, then it's worth it to invest in the presentation of the ideas. Write a spec. Put it on the Web. Make it so that if others agree they would have enough information to implement support for your idea from your proposal. Accept feedback and requests for clarification. Don't ask other people to write the spec for you, that means they have to debug your idea and perhaps read your mind. No one can really do that. If you're not willing to make the investment in your ideas, don't expect others to. And sell. Explain how your idea will benefit others. What features will it enable? Who else supports the idea? Will Web developers understand it? How long will it take to get support from aggregators? Think about the other people. This is a political process, don't ignore that. Other ideas? If you have other ideas on how the process can be successful, let me know. I'm not just interested in the evolution of RSS, but I'm also interested in learning how to be part of productive, interesting and fun open development projects. Dave Winer
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Last update: Friday, June 9, 2000 at 9:38:49 PM Pacific. |
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