Eye on Winer

Dave flames Sam Ruby for trying to make RSS enclosures more “simple” for those who don’t use the latin character set. He writes:

Here’s an illustration of tech industry interference with RSS. That’s Sam Ruby, the lead of the Atom working group, an employee of IBM, trying to rewrite the rules of RSS 2.0. Do you understand what he’s saying? I don’t. Assuming he means well, which I think is a stretch (he’s got a huge conflict of interest) he surely doesn’t understand the phillosophy (sic) of RSS 2.0. Does management at IBM know he’s doing this, is this part of a strategy to keep their lock on the enterprise software business, which RSS clearly is a threat to? Like Sam, they have a conflict of interest too. In the tech world, I’ve learned that if you think the worst of people’s motives you’re usually right. IBM doesn’t generally go for the high road. In any case, IBM should call him off, now. Atom is fine, let people use that if they want, but if you screw with RSS, we’re going to shine the light on you.

Let’s examine, shall we?

1. Value judgment of Ruby’s email as “interference”
2. Claims it’s “a stretch” that Ruby “means well”
3. Claims Ruby “doesn’t understand the philosophy” of RSS (without explanation)
4. Makes some odd inferences about IBM/Ruby trying to sabotage RSS
5. Doesn’t even try to suggest that Ruby’s idea isn’t a good one

So without having any idea what Ruby is talking about he assumes that the change would be bad for RSS and then accuses him, in so many words, of sabotage.

You stay classy, Dave Winer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Dave, RSS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.