* James M Snell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-07-16 20:05]: > If the community can drive a viable solution without the > overhead of a formalized standardization process, it will work > out best for everyone and the anti-formal-standards crowd will > have far less to complain about or will at least be able to > devote more time to bashing atom ;-)
Yeah – wasn’t the idea about specifying extension mechanisms so thoroughly in the Atom format spec that it would allow anyone to bolt on things via a variety of available hooks, ad-hoc, without needing to define semantics and having worry about interop anew each time? A strong base spec should be able to carry organic growth without requiring reliance on the legitimization of a standards body to make things work; legitimization can be granted retrospectively by writing down existing practice. (I am reminded of Shirky’s “praise of evolvable systems.” And heck, Atom itself is an example of this.) So yeah, I don’t Yahoo or Apple need to be pushed towards a standards body. It would be enough if are willing to iterate their specs before finalizing them, with input from a crowd of eyeballs. Apple seems willing to do that now; John Gruber argues it’s because they were scampering to get to the market with podcasting in iTunes. Yahoo has been, from the start. I think the timing for Atom going gold couldn’t have been much better; had it taken a bit more time, then all discussion of the podcasting and media extensions would have had to revolve solely around RSS since there wouldn’t have been any Atom format to think about. We should be glad that the spec was pushed through at the final stages; a tip of the hat to the WG chairs and members who insisted on making haste with a Good Enough text. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
