4 ms·

What I mean by "the open web"

39 points by davewiner 16y ago

ez77 16y ago
To me the critical distinction hinges on required logins/APIs vs. open sites. (Redefining 'open' just be a bit provocative.) In any case, you could argue that loads of unsilo'd sites have been unfairly open to Google through their robots.txt.
- davewiner 16y ago
  What does "unfairly open to google" mean?
  - ez77 16y ago
    Something like User-agent: * Disallow: / User-agent: Googlebot Allow: / This can be found on many /robots.txt files. I imagine that some of them will try to enforce this access policy. My point is that equal access for all has never existed. (Not that it would be realistic to expect it.)
    - davewiner 16y ago
      So to be more precise you mean open to Google and closed to everyone else. I agree that sucks.
bambax 16y ago
I didn't follow the original discussion, but while I agree with the importance of the "open web" and the relative evilness of "corporate blogging silos", I don't quite understand how RSS and HTML are "really different faces of the same thing". RSS is an open way of discovering new content; it is dead(-ish) because real people don't use it. I'm aware that there are RSS readers; there even are RSS readers that actually work. But RSS readers are not what the great majority of people use to discover new content; new content is discovered "socially" on YC or Reddit, etc.
- donohoe 16y ago
  I was stumped by the "really different faces of the same thing" claim as well in relation to HTML and RSS. While RSS is not dead, and probably wont be for a long long time, I also think it needs to be viewed in perspective. "normal" people (not you and me) don't know what RSS is and for the most-part don't use it (or don't know that they are using it sometimes). Dave has some good insights from time to time, but I get the impression that he is stretching his credits and claims far beyond reality. You can only wave the "I co-invented RSS way back" flag for so long.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - codingthewheel 16y ago
    I think what he meant by that was that webpages and RSS feeds ultimately boil down to the same thing: transmitting markup across the wire. That's really all an RSS feed usually is; HTML markup CDATA'd or escaped inside a simple XML doc (often incorrectly). Whether you request a webpage through a browser or an RSS feed through a reader, you're essentially doing the same thing. And I think RSS/ATOM have failed to go mainstream for three reasons: - The RSS and Atom specs are a mess. A mess. And have been for years. Most RSS/ATOM feeds are technically incorrect in some way, usually around the escaping of markup and/or the presence of feed metadata. - There have been few, if any, truly inspired RSS readers (Google Reader doesn't count). - Browser makers have never made RSS a first-class user experience. When asked to, the response is "nobody uses RSS". But nobody uses RSS because there's not a compelling RSS facility in any major browser, including Firefox.
  - davewiner 16y ago
    Where do you see me waving any flags? I think you should be equally protective of open formats and protocols. Stand up for them. That's all I'm doing donahoe.
  - Kevin_Marks 16y ago
    If you want an HTML equivalent for RSS, there's hAtom: http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom

39 points by davewiner 16y ago

ez77 16y ago

To me the critical distinction hinges on required logins/APIs vs. open sites. (Redefining 'open' just be a bit provocative.) In any case, you could argue that loads of unsilo'd sites have been unfairly open to Google through their robots.txt.

davewiner 16y ago
What does "unfairly open to google" mean?
- ez77 16y ago
  Something like User-agent: * Disallow: / User-agent: Googlebot Allow: / This can be found on many /robots.txt files. I imagine that some of them will try to enforce this access policy. My point is that equal access for all has never existed. (Not that it would be realistic to expect it.)
  - davewiner 16y ago
    So to be more precise you mean open to Google and closed to everyone else. I agree that sucks.

bambax 16y ago

I didn't follow the original discussion, but while I agree with the importance of the "open web" and the relative evilness of "corporate blogging silos", I don't quite understand how RSS and HTML are "really different faces of the same thing". RSS is an open way of discovering new content; it is dead(-ish) because real people don't use it. I'm aware that there are RSS readers; there even are RSS readers that actually work. But RSS readers are not what the great majority of people use to discover new content; new content is discovered "socially" on YC or Reddit, etc.

donohoe 16y ago
I was stumped by the "really different faces of the same thing" claim as well in relation to HTML and RSS. While RSS is not dead, and probably wont be for a long long time, I also think it needs to be viewed in perspective. "normal" people (not you and me) don't know what RSS is and for the most-part don't use it (or don't know that they are using it sometimes). Dave has some good insights from time to time, but I get the impression that he is stretching his credits and claims far beyond reality. You can only wave the "I co-invented RSS way back" flag for so long.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- codingthewheel 16y ago
  I think what he meant by that was that webpages and RSS feeds ultimately boil down to the same thing: transmitting markup across the wire. That's really all an RSS feed usually is; HTML markup CDATA'd or escaped inside a simple XML doc (often incorrectly). Whether you request a webpage through a browser or an RSS feed through a reader, you're essentially doing the same thing. And I think RSS/ATOM have failed to go mainstream for three reasons: - The RSS and Atom specs are a mess. A mess. And have been for years. Most RSS/ATOM feeds are technically incorrect in some way, usually around the escaping of markup and/or the presence of feed metadata. - There have been few, if any, truly inspired RSS readers (Google Reader doesn't count). - Browser makers have never made RSS a first-class user experience. When asked to, the response is "nobody uses RSS". But nobody uses RSS because there's not a compelling RSS facility in any major browser, including Firefox.
- davewiner 16y ago
  Where do you see me waving any flags? I think you should be equally protective of open formats and protocols. Stand up for them. That's all I'm doing donahoe.
- Kevin_Marks 16y ago
  If you want an HTML equivalent for RSS, there's hAtom: http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom