Shelley Powers, through her weblog and posts to RSS-DEV site, offers a refreshingly different and enlightening take on the current discussions about RDF in RSS that has clarified much for me.
The title of her post "Who is your audience, and what are you trying to accomplish?" is her overriding point and brings into focus a crucial issue that is seemingly at the root of much confusion circular debate.
If RSS, past and current, is based on providing syndication and aggregation feeds, and nothing more, than I agree with those that say RDF adds nothing to the mix, and not because RDF adds complexity -- the reason is because the business of RSS isn't necessarily compatible with the business of RDF.
She continues:
If this group wants to continue providing a specification that defines syndication feeds, then it needs to consider that RDF not only doesn't buy the group anything -- it can harm the tool developers that use the spec. (Not to mention that trying to use RDF inappropriately can actually negatively impact the acceptance of the RDF specification.)
If, however, this group sees that what they're working on transcends throwaway syndication feeds, then it needs to formally define exactly what the business is _before_ trying to create a spec that implements it. Hence my questions: who is your audience and what are you trying to accomplish?
In echoing these thoughts on the RSS-DEV list, Shelley asked for some use cases of RDF in RSS in which Danny Ayers offers two:
*** Use Case 1 : Meme of the Moment ***
How do I find those events?
How do I find the people involved in those events?
How do I find the location of those events?
How do I find future events related to these?
The first of these is 'news-like' data, the other information is relatively static. I want this all in a feed.
*** Use Case 2 : Dubya Gets Drunk ***
A newspaper can provide a news headline saying 'Dubya gets drunk', which is fine, if the readers already know all about Dubya. If they don't, then the newspaper can provide some background in Section 2. The background information about Dubya will remain relatively constant, but the headline will change. If semantically rich data is available, then that background information can automatically be linked into the feed.
Shelley responded that case 1 expanded the scope of RSS beyond its current use, and that 2 was in scope and fits a potential need. However her question of purpose and audience where never really answered or agreed upon which prompted her post today.
Making a long story short: though I respect many of the individuals involved with RSS 1.0, their effort and hard work and intelligence and capability as well as energy, I can't continue to support RSS 1.0 or RSS-Dev. Not with this current level of confusion about what the group sees as its purpose.
Unfortunately, not supporting RSS 1.0 is seen as giving victory to Dave Winer at Userland, by forcing us into choosing an RSS 0.9x/RSS 2.0 path. However, I still don't approve of Dave's approach to implementing RSS and his unwillingness to give up ownership of it. I can respect Dave's contribution, and his hard work and effort, and his intelligence and capability, but I can't support a supposedly 'open' spec that's controlled by one company.
Ultimately, supporting either specification means, to me, continuing to support this competition between the groups, competition which threatens to Never...Go...Away, as can be seen in the comments to Phil's posting.
Sometimes, when I read these types of comments, I feel as if you and I don't matter at all; that you and I are nothing more than scraps of meat being fought over by two junk yard dogs. Well, this just peeves me. So, I'm taking the route that's been available to consumers since the beginning of time: I'm not buying.
I understand how Shelley feels. I've appreciated her comments on the RSS-DEV list recently as they have clarified a lot of my confusion and given me a new perspective.
In related news and in commentary made to one of Shelley's posts, Dave Menendez wrote:
This thread got me thinking about what makes RSS useful in the first place. What is RSS about at its core?
My understanding now is that the key feature of RSS is the list of items in the channel. Everything else--textareas, images, titles, descriptions--is secondary (but useful). Boiled down to its essence, the essential part of RSS is rss:items.
Dave has authored a proposal he calls RDF channel that is quite an intriguing and interesting concept. Assuming it fits the purpose once (if?) it's defined.
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