Re: XML protocol comparison

If nobody on the list objects, I am fine with your suggestion (in separate
email) that we continue the discussion on the public list.

I will take an RSS feed and take a quick pass at mapping it into an ICE
message, and post the result on the list.

On Sat, 20 May 2000, Dave Winer wrote:
> Re the expense of a RSS-capable website, it costs $0 and is available at
> www.editthispage.com or www.weblogs.com (both of which are UserLand-operated
> services). The RSS feed is automatically generated on the fly from the
> contents of the home page of the site. I'll go look for a pointer to the
> howto for this built-in capability of all Manila sites.
> 
> http://weblogs.userland.com/manilaNewbies/discuss/msgReader$2691

Yes, and there are a number of ICE service providers a well. However, the
idea for the "lightweight syndicator" in ICE is that a content author
could package and ship content via ICE. This is slightly different from
what you describe in that in ICE, the protocol's would be:

Author -- ICE --> Publisher -- ICE --> Subscriber

And in RSS:

Author -- not-RSS --> Publisher -- RSS --> Subscriber

I can easily see arguments for both WebDAV and ICE as channels from
content authors to publishers...

> There's new management at Vignette now, including an old friend, Richard
> Schwartz who I think is their CTO, so there's plenty of room for
> forgiveness. I encourage you to take the high road, we've got a lot of
> content flowing through RSS, and it is being managed pretty well, it will be
> better-managed in the future, and there will be lots more content soon.
> Imagine what we could accomplish if we worked together.

I think that we're in voplent agreement on this.

> Also there was an impromptu BOF meeting about RSS at WWW9 yesterday at the
> web publishing developer's day track. I've been trying to figure out how to
> move RSS forward, perhaps there is a middle ground, something we can do to
> get more content to flow through your network, and vice versa. The high road
> approach would be to do that, and I think if you took that approach you
> would be serving the people and companies who look to you to keep them in
> the loop on all the latest developments. Just my own opinion.
> 
> BTW, in case any confusion remains -- we are a publishing technology
> company. It's stated pretty clearly on http://www.userland.com/ We are also
> active on the content side, we publish over 5000 sites, and we're growing
> quickly. Also, I think this was quite clearly stated at the time ICE was
> evolving, publicly, many times. We were doing a trial with Vignette, so how
> could they not have known that? All their sales people were demoing it. We
> shut down our scripting tools business in 1995, and all this stuff was
> happening in 1997 and 1998. But a lot of people didn't hear it or believe
> it. Hopefully by now it's clear, we still do lots of scripting stuff,
> because it's a key technology in the publishing business.

I certainly know that now. Back in 1997, I have to admit that the folks
setting up the AG had a mis-perception of Userland's focus. I'm glad that
we've got an opportunity to clear things up all around.

> Yours truly in peace and happiness..
> 
> Dave
> 
> PS: It occurs to me that we could bake ICE support into Manila, as we have
> for RSS and WAP. Then you'd find 5000 new authors for your network,
> overnight. What an incredible business opportunity for your members. (And of
> course for my company.)

That would be a wonderful thing. The value of syndication increases as the
square of the number of participants, so merging two groups squares the
value of the resulting population. (Sorry, that's the math major in me
talking).

> PPS: I'm still in Amsterdam, well-rested and kind of bored. If anyone is
> still here and wants to talk, I'm available for dinner and looking for
> interesting converstation.

Cool. I an in NYC, though. Next time you're in town, I'd love to get
together to talk things over. Email is a dangerous tool...

Received on Saturday, 20 May 2000 19:04:20 UTC