In the continuing discussion of the future of RSS, Rael Dornfest, RSS 1.0 working group chairperson, addresses Dave Winer's plan to release the final draft of what he is now calling "RSS 2.0." (It was original conceived at 0.94.) Rael writes "I believe what you're hearing from various quarters is that there are mega problems, minor problems, not the least of which is that you're about to cut off some of the most productive discussion on the future of RSS -- both in terms of community and technical details -- in two years."
It seems alot of the action has been at Ben Hammersley's RSS weblog lately and I had been missing out. Ben is collecting questions for Dave Winer on his RSS proposal. The attached comments to his posts have some insightful observations worth reading illustrating the need to stop rushing the design of the specification. Ben also points to Sam Ruby's suggestions for the Userland proposal.
I like Sam's thinking. With agreement on namespaces in principle, I think cleaning up the "core" is a smart idea. Sam's notion of removing (depreciating?) redundant and "optional" tags in modules strikes a reasonable balance to satisfying the divergent opinions. It also simplifies the format.
It does not end the discussion. In fact it raises a major question in my mind that I have not seen discussed directly: What do we break compatibility with? Looking at it another way, what format do we maintain compatibility with? The is not clear in any of the discussions I've read.
RSS 0.91 broke compatibility with 0.90. 1.0 is based on 0.90 while 0.92-0.94 is based on 0.91, but breaks backward computability with it. Proposals by Rael (2 years ago) Sam, Jon, Mark and Shelley (with refinements by Sean Palmer) strike some interesting compromises with varying degrees and types of compatibility with previous formats.
Perhaps it has not been discussed because it is the no-win scenario. Perhaps backward compatability with existing aggregators and toolkit is the key. Nonetheless, it would seem to me that until some consensus is formed on this issue, other discussions cannot be had.
I'd like to be wrong. Am I?
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