Keep RSS Free for All

21700 Resource 11678 21 21 1076181280923 1076253559237 Controlled The "Keep RSS Free for All" Free-for-all

RSS is free, open, and standard (well, sort of), but that does not--and should not--imply that all information is free, open, or standard. (Sorry, Jim.)

The RSS free-for-all is picking up steam.  It's getting more and more difficult to find a technology pundit who does not have something to say about RSS.  That's good.  RSS is important.  It's not a cure for cancer and it has lots of wrinkles, but it is a very useful technology for moving information from one place to another. RSS is a technology; a way of doing something, specifically, a way of moving information from point A to point B.  ASCII is also a technology; a way of doing something, specifically a way of encoding alphanumeric characters as 7-bit integers.  These technologies are building blocks for applications, specific use cases addressed by software using those technologies. Debates about the proper use of a technology, such as the one triggered by Jim Louderback's recent eWEEK article, <A href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1517234,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594">Keep RSS Free for All</A>, are, frankly, silly wastes of time and pixels.  Jim seems to be arguing that since RSS (the technology for moving information) is a free and open standard, that the information being moved by RSS should also be free and open.  Sorry, Jim, that makes about as much sense as suggesting that all ASCII documents should be freely available to anyone with the technology to read ASCII. Greg Reinacker, of <A href="http://www.newsgator.com/">NewsGator Technologies</A>, has built an information service for which he charges a usage fee.  He is not the first to have done this, nor will he be the last.  The fact that this service makes information available via RSS does no more to create a "walled garden" around RSS than does the fact that the information is encoded in ASCII does to create a "walled garden" around ASCII. Technologies are not applications.  A sign of a good technology is that it can be used in many different applications.  RSS is a good technology that will be put to more and more uses, some freely available, some not.  Whether you need to move information for free or for pay, you are free to use RSS to do so. 9 application/xml false free-for-all Jim Louderback Keep RSS Free for All RSS debate technology vs. application Keep RSS Free for All By Jim Louderback, February 6, 2004, eWeek http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1517234,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 68.42.141.35 68.42.141.35 aseidl false true false false true 190014 false false true false false false true 11678 blog blogsite/MySTHome/web