
Preparing for 25 Years - mooreds
http://scripting.com/2019/08/06/155950.html
======
soapdog
I enjoyed a ton of Daves stuff. I've programmer using Frontier. I've used
Radio. I've implemented RSS, XML-RPC, and OPML in languages that at the time
barelly had a XML parser library. In essence it helped mold me as a developer
back in Mac OS 9 (or was it 8?).

One thing that I always did when learning a new language was to implement a
GUI blogging client. Blogging has always been one of the most fun parts of the
internet for me and Dave has played a pivotal role in shaping this. Heck, I
blame him for my love of outliners.

Still, it was bittersweet when he blocked me on Twitter after a disagreement
opinion on the fundamental role of journalism in a democratic society. I wish
there was a better exchange at the time, he posted an open public question
about the role of journalism, I've answered truthfully as someone who is
married to and walks with journalists. And poof, block.

That sucked but I still hold a lot of the things he created quite dear. I'm
right now implementing blogging libraries for Racket and maybe even a new GUI
client soon, and for that fun, I thanks that guy and his 25 years of blogging
stuff.

~~~
kragen
> _Still, it was bittersweet when he blocked me on Twitter_

What was the sweet part of being blocked? Was there some stuff he posted that
you really hated, or was he reading your tweets and launching personal attacks
on you, or what?

~~~
soapdog
Maybe I chose the wrong word. English is my second language. He just posted an
open question on twitter and I answered. There was no hate or discussion. For
me it was bittersweet because I was happy to interact, I thought I was
contributing because I do have a ton of experience with the subject, but then
when I was expecting a reply, he blocked. There was no interaction.

Let me be clear that people are free to block whoever they want. Dave is not
required or expected to interact with me. It was for me unexpected because I
thought that some conversation could emerge. Still, this is not a shame the
guy session. Everyone has the right to block whoever they want for whatever
reason they want. My comment was actually about how besides that bad day, I
still value his work a lot and still am influenced and play with the concepts
and technologies he created.

~~~
davewiner
What's your Twitter handle so I can unblock. And thanks for being so
reasonable about it.

~~~
soapdog
Hey thanks a ton for all the work in these last 25 years. The account is
[https://twitter.com/soapdog](https://twitter.com/soapdog)

~~~
davewiner
I just unblocked and followed you.

Thanks for the respect, much appreciated. ;-)

------
latchkey
Here is a Dave story...

I once wrote an early web server using his Frontier Scripting platform which
ended up serving up a large corporate website that my company built. Crazy
early days of the web. So, I got to 'know' Dave a bit online.

One time I was at a bar (that no longer exists) in San Francisco at some
MacWorld event in the 90's and Dave showed up. He and I had previously had
some emails back and forth that were not necessarily pleasant, probably some
silly flame war of some sort that I can't remember. I was definitely young and
stupid and this was the .com 90's!

When he was near me, I jokingly said: 'Hey Dave, bite me!" and a bunch of my
friends started laughing. Mostly because they knew his reputation for flame
wars. He immediately got over the top furious with me, said 'Never say that to
me again!', walked away and we never spoke again.

Anyway, I just want to apologize, I shouldn't have said that.

~~~
davewiner
I like this in your profile --

"Important: If you are looking at this profile because you thought something I
posted was wrong, dismissive, disrespectful, douchebaggish, what have you, I
would really like to hear from you so that I could understand how you got that
impression. I won't get mad, I won't "retaliate" I just want to hear what you
have to say. It is important to me to communicate clearly and if something I
said struck you that way then I failed and I would like to correct it.
(Borrowed from another profile)"

Yes I feel you are being all that in this post. At the end you apologize,
that's nice, but before that you said some insulting personal things about me,
that I'm sure aren't true. Take responsibility for what you did and said and
leave it at that. Apologizing for nasty behavior and then saying yeah but the
guy was a dick, that isn't apologizing.

Anyway this is par for the course of Hacker News. The troll post always is
highest ranked.

~~~
onli
> _Anyway this is par for the course of Hacker News. The troll post always is
> highest ranked._

:( HN is the platform on the net where you will read "RSS should be used more"
and "Thanks Dave Winer for this great tech" most often. And here you have a
comment of someone with no history of trolling (according to his most recent
posts at least) who made himself very small ("I was an idiot") and apologized
to you, and you insult not only him, but the whole platform.

Dave, you don't know me, but a lot of people here read you. And so many of the
developers here build software with technology you like (i.e. I implemented a
RSS feed for my blog software, a feed reader [with opml import!], a rss
polling and pushing infrastructure, and a RSS focused SaaS pipes revival site)
and share some of your ideals. Is it really necessary to be antagonistic to
all of us? How is this a winning strategy?

And assume for a moment latchkeys story is genuine. You don't remember it, but
so what, it was 25 years ago and you said yourself you had lots of bad
interactions at that time. I'd be very surprised if some idiot kid acting
badly is something you would remember. Your reaction now to his public apology
would be devastating.

From your second comment:

> _His memory of me, a guy who he says created software that he used and
> liked, is the time he treated me like an object._

To me it reads like he treated you like one of his friends, which obviously
was a bad idea if you have a different age and cultural background, besides
not sharing this strange feeling of knowing someone because you read his blogs
for years, who of course never realized you exist.

~~~
latchkey
Spot on, except the devastating part. I am not surprised by his response and
I'm old enough now to just shrug it off.

My story was absolutely genuine and is in response to his request for
stories...

"I wonder what it looked like from the other side of the net connection."

~~~
onli
That's good to hear :)

------
cschmidt
I've enjoyed reading Dave's writing for most of that time. His email
newsletter DaveNet used to include the email addresses of a few random
subscribers to each person. It was fun to see the addresses of famous people
occasionally. Dave's always had interesting ideas. Looking back in my old
email, I have some DaveNet's from 2003, but I read it back to the mid '90's or
so.

For many years I read everything on scripting.com. I still check in now and
again. Thanks for everything Dave.

(Dave seems to be one of those people that can't be discussed rationally on
HN, much like Stephen Wolfram.)

------
Udo
Thank you Dave Winer for creating RSS. For a while there, it seemed like we
were on a path of making all data free, a truly decentralized web of
information. I wish the internet would have continued on that route.

~~~
bb101
I use RSS multiple times a day through Feedly and Reeder. It is anything but
dead.

~~~
krick
Uh, sorta, kinda, I guess... It is a lot less alive than it should and could
have been. Sure, you can set up your own web-server, install RSS reader on
your phone and use RSS as a protocol to get updates of your cat coming in and
out or whatever. But essentially all the major services heavily discourage its
usage for the majority of users.

~~~
ghaff
You're both right.

Sure, you can use Feedly quite easily and a lot of sites, blogs, etc. still
generate RSS feeds.

On the other hand, it's not really a first-class citizen, it's not available
on major services that want eyeballs, subscription fees, etc. And, frankly, a
lot of us have just mostly gotten out of the habit of using it because we
figure we'll learn about most interesting or important stuff on social media
in some manner.

~~~
fouc
Perhaps we need to splinter the internet.

A second-citizen only internet.

A separate internet with strict open web considerations, federated protocols,
rss, irc, or new updated things.

~~~
ghaff
Isn't that kinda what we have?

You can write web apps rather than mobile apps, publish on open source
publishing platforms, use IRC, use RSS, etc. Yes, there may be discoverability
and other downsides but nothing is actually preventing you from avoiding
walled gardens for the most part.

~~~
fouc
The problem is there's an arms race on web browsers and constant upgrading of
OSes and software and hidden centralizing effects. So even if some group of
people are using IRC and RSS, probably many of them are getting caught up in
google, chrome, and the current centralizing trend of the current "Web"

~~~
skybrian
IRC is not in the same situation as websites. Plain HTML pages work fine in
mainstream browsers. The web server does need to be upgraded to do encryption,
but there is good open source software available for that.

------
_pmf_
Very underrated pioneer in a lot of areas.

~~~
CharlesW
I find it sad that people would down-vote this. Regardless of how you feel
about him personally, it'd be a different and far more silo'd internet without
him.

~~~
chrisfinazzo
I think his dust up with Google re HTTPS rubbed a bunch of people the wrong
way. On one level, he's of an age where good intent was assumed on the web, so
security wasn't a big concern.

(On that note, ask John Siracusa how it felt to have TTYs @ BU be "world-
writable" in 1993)

On the other hand, that world is largely gone and the web is much more fraught
with peril these days.

~~~
davewiner
In case anyone is wondering, this is the FAQ on Google and HTTP.

[http://this.how/googleAndHttp](http://this.how/googleAndHttp)

As far as I know they've never responded.

~~~
dimator
Firefox doesn't make it's decisions based on the same criteria as Google, but:
[https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/07/18/still-not-
using-...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/07/18/still-not-using-https-
firefox-is-about-to-shame-you/)

What are your thoughts on that?

~~~
davewiner
I think this is the problem with letting the tech industry take ownership of
open formats and protocols.

------
davewiner
Do they have a block command on Hacker News??

~~~
kick
They do not, sorry.

~~~
davewiner
Thanks. Imho if they had one it would create a more civil environment here.

------
justsomeone88
I feel bad for Dave. He was so early to the table on so many occasions yet he
was left behind and never really made it big monetarily. He is the definition
of missing the boat.

~~~
davewiner
Please don't feel bad. I was never trying to make a lot of money from the web.
I had lots of opportunities to sell out. I did that once, in the 80s, and that
has funded my creative work ever since. Money isn't that useful, I learned,
pretty early-on. Here's a piece I wrote about that recently.

[http://scripting.com/2016/05/31/1296.html](http://scripting.com/2016/05/31/1296.html)

