Julien, since I was one of those people objecting to this model.. Let me clarify my point:
There is certainly a need for protected RSS feeds: password protected, obfuscated URL's, etc. For those, the publisher is maintaining an ACL for who should and/or should not access those feeds. But, if the publisher makes all of their feeds publicly available individually, then it seems to me that a missing firehose feed is simply a technical hurdle. Take Buzz as an example.. At PostRank we had the "firehose" even prior to the "real firehose" by actively crawling Google's sitemap (public), identifying users with Buzz feeds, and subscribing to their individual PSHB feeds. It was painful, and not very efficient, but it worked and did not violate any TOS. In effect, it was an artificial barrier - granted, there may be a reason why you might want to make it hard to get at this data, but the point is, outsiders are still able to do it. In the case of Posterous, same logic applies. I could run a crawler, go gather all the RSS feeds, and call it a day. I'm not violating any TOS, as much as I'm jumping over a technical barrier. If anything, this is flawed thinking on the part of the distributor of those RSS feeds. As far as pricing goes. I'm not the one to decide on your business model, but as a developer/user I do think that double-charging (both the provider, and the consumer) is counter-productive. Most publishers have the problem of _nobody giving a damn_ about their content, and not the other way around (certainly something we see a lot of at PostRank). Hence, lowering the barriers to distribution for those publishers is one of the key ways they can address this. That's why RSS feeds are so valuable in the first place. Most publishers have realized at this point that full-content RSS feeds are the way to go - as in, give it away, give it away for free, and if they like it, they'll come for more. Hail mary? Perhaps. But that's how the world works in the age of content abundance. So, my point is: charge the publisher for the PSHB hub. You're providing a service, you can charge them based on amount of people consuming their content (in other words, align yourself with their success metric). But, for "Joe the developer".. I'm not paying to access a push RSS feed when I can get that RSS feed for free by walking around your fake fence - it's silly. Yes, I get it, it's more efficient, but still. What bothers me is that every hub you lock in at superfeedr, is a hub I can't access for free. In reverse, this is why I am so excited about Google's PSHB hub - they get it. Publishers want distribution, they're aligning themselves with the publishers. ig On Nov 17, 6:13 pm, Julien Genestoux <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello everybody, > > Today, twice I've had talks with people who assumed that by default all the > data available via PubSubHubbub was expected to be free and accessible by > any one for any purpose. > I think this is a 'wrong' idea and it doesn't serve us very well, so I wrote > a blog post about it :http://blog.superfeedr.com/not-a-license/ > > I think it's awesome that so many services, like Buzz grant an almost > unlimited and full access to all their data, but I think we (and maybe > anyone advocating) should make sure that we do not give the idea that by > implementing PubSubHubbub people give away their data and any rights around > it. > > Any feedback is much appreciated! Has anyone bumped into the same > mis-understanding? or worse, had them? > > Julien
