RSS as a technology is fantastically simple and powerful, and is just now beginning to hit the big time. But RSS development as a social phenomenon is the biggest stinking failure I've come across in a long time.
See the discussion following this post to get an idea why. It's absolutely hilarious. Unless you're a developer who needs a clear definition of RSS. Or a consumer of RSS feeds. Or someone who cares about the future of the web. In those cases it would be more appropriate to weep.
The creators and promoters of RSS should take a huge amount of credit for producing something so valuable and an equally huge amount of stick for doing it in such a disorganised, bad-tempered and purile fashion. I'm not saying I could do any better — I'm also a borderline-autistic geek who's better at writing code than communicating and cooperating. But is it a shame (not to say hugely ironic) that an interoperability format that is so simple and powerful has to be created by an acrimonious process that's so convoluted and ineffectual.
I am suddenly even more in awe of what Linus Torvalds has achieved. Imagine the Linux kernel development being directed by the RSS crowd. :-{
Posted by timo at July 5, 2003 10:33 AM | TrackBack