
What I mean by "the open web" - davewiner
http://scripting.com/stories/2011/01/04/whatIMeanByTheOpenWeb.html
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bambax
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
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.

~~~
davewiner
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.

------
ez77
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
What does "unfairly open to google" mean?

~~~
ez77
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
So to be more precise you mean open to Google and closed to everyone else. I
agree that sucks.

