NameSplitting

[Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>]

I'm really encouraged by what's happening here.

Dave, I like your proposal, but one thing came to mind on the first
reading - 

RSS 0.9x and RSS 1.0 are different formats, yes, but they are
related; they have an intertwined history, and a common purpose -
i.e., people who use syndication will know about both if they do a
bit of homework, and will more than likely work with both eventually.

More to the point, Syndication as a whole is still catching on. I've
been asking a lot of content providers to make their wares available
in RSS lately, and by far the most common response is, "what?"

If we change names away from RSS, we loose what little momentum we
have. If we change the names so that they are fundamentally
different, people don't link them in their minds, and they become
competing efforts in the user space, not just the developer space.

So, a thought - what about keeping the RSS as the root of their
names, but moving away from competing version numbers, which gives
people a feeling that the RDF version is the latest-greatest, rather
than an option?

e.g.,

RSS 0.91 -> RSS Simple 
RSS 1.0 -> RSS Semantic 

Each of those can have their own versioning system for future
development.

This would allow both of them to benefit from a single RSS
evangelization effort. Basically, we're telling the world that yes,
we can play together.

I think this was somewhat discussed a long time ago, but I'd like to
re-examine it in this atmosphere. Feel free to shoot it down - just
wanted to get it out there.

Cheers,

-- 
Mark Nottingham
http://www.mnot.net/