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Syndication Reloaded and Revolution

Sam Ruby started a Wiki on The Conceptual Model of a Log Entry. On the issue of proposed new syndication format, which I presume it would be more than just syndication, there’s a Roadmap to New Log Format. The idea is to develop a new syndicate format, where it’s

• 100% vendor neutral
  
• implemented by everybody,
  
• freely extensible by anybody, and
  
• cleanly and thoroughly specified.

I am positive on the move. To me, vendor neutral is the key point. I’ve wondered why RSS didn’t standardized as like SOAP did. It’s something should done long time ago, before it goes out of control. I think a new syndication format is at least good for following reasons:

1. Standardization
   Standardization give a chance to explain syndication in-depth, in a less-confusing way, and more-specified. Besides, it looks like different versions of RSS could be claimed by different group by people. And though it isn’t sound a big deal to most RSS developers, it brings confusion, argument and sometimes FUD. Technically speaking, we really need a well-explained specification.
2. Too many variants
   The current RSS world is just messy. There are too many different versions. And when you come to RSS, you have to know which side you’re going to stay: which one support date/time? to use or ? put my entity encoded HTML in or ? what is that GUID?… There are so many choice and most people depend on their blogging tools to generate one for them. It was worse that different tools generate different version of RSS, and not all of them generate validated RSS! So, putting on the effort for new log format, might be good to be out of this mess.

Alright, it looks good. It hasn’t been named. No matter what it would be named, how about compatibility? Is the new format going to be backward-compatible? What if it’s a totally new stuff and not backward compatible? Would all the blogging system vendors supporting it? Would users switch? I don’t know. I think vendors would be happy to support it if there’s a clear instruction to interpret/compose the syndication, and it’s more extensible and interoperable. On users side, to give enough time, people who didn’t switch would be out-numbered and force to switch.

I don’t know. I’m just being positive.

[update] More reading:

• Mark Pilgrim: Echo chamber, A fresh start?

• Sam Ruby: Forward motion, Road Map, Linkage, permaLink or unique ID?

• Blogger support, Six Apart support

• Tim Bray: Why are we doing this?, How to Identify a Log Entry

• Dave Winer: The lizard brain of RSS, A gentle introduction to the RSS controversy, Post IDs

• Simon Willison: More thoughts on RSS

• Inside the Pie: RoadMap, NameIt, PermaLinks, TimestampVsCreationDateTime, DublinCore, SyntaxConsiderations