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RFC: Rounding out the MetaWeblog API.   On one of the mail lists I'm asked why I'm such a focal point for such strong feelings. I tried to answer the best I can. I am a leader. I have created many of the tools and formats that they use, far more than anyone else on the lists. It's kind of like a Jack Nicholson movie. I gave them tools that they love and use. They hate me for it. I've had this experience before. I loaned a friend a lot of money once. I told my friend Jean-Louis about it. He said my friend would hate me for it. He was right. I've been on the other side of it myself. When I was younger, I was left on the sidelines by friends who made millions of dollars while I was still poor. I hated them. See how it works. Eventually I made lots of money and thought everyone would love me because I kept working my ass off to invent new stuff. Nope. Here's an old DaveNet piece that talks about this. Check out the bit about Making It. Basically the rule is that success breeds envy, and envy isn't that far from hate. So what's worse than a rich guy who creates formats and protocols that are sticky, has a high flow weblog, and a fellowship at Harvard? Not much. SJ Merc: "3Com, a pioneering Silicon Valley technology firm that has stumbled in recent years, is moving its headquarters from Santa Clara to Massachusetts." The leaders of OSCOM, Gregor Rothfuss and Paul Everitt, wrote a strongly worded manifesto about interop and open source, wondering if open source developers want interop. Hey guys the problem isn't just with open source. In commercial-software-land there's better interop with Microsoft than with the smaller competitors. MS, as they enter a market, places a very high value on interop, it's how they transition users away from the competition into their software. After the transition is complete, the trunk is closed and locked from the outside, as they move on to the next conquest. Now, of course open source projects should be as ruthless on the uptake, support the open formats and protocols, but be nicer on the other side, no lock-in please. I'll preach this religion with you at OSCOM3 later this month.  Analysts and pols are hemming and hawing about the propriety of Halliburton being given the oil industry of Iraq. Come on, this is too easy. Even if it had been put up for bid, Halliburton shouldn't have been considered because the vice-president was the CEO of the company before running for office. And it wasn't put up for bid, they just gave the contract to Halliburton. Here's strike three -- they still haven't found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This is a scandal. BTW, Cheney is still on the Halliburton payroll. Garth's kid is born. Ain't life great! Redhead: "Can't hide from the Redhead." A bit more forward motion in OPML-Directory-Browser-Land. Chris Pirillo notes that /. doesn't always yield much flow. 5/7/97: "Programmers have a very precise understanding of truth." AOL weblogs?  From a trusted correspondent, talking with a contact who works at the Netscape part of AOL/Time Warner. "He said they had decided that weblogs are the next killer app, and that most of the work at the Mountain View office was going into building a weblog component for AOL. He also mentioned that about 400 people are working on that software. This is in constrast to about 20 who are working on Mozilla." Comments. Well that means that Microsoft can't be far behind. Let's hope that both companies support the MetaWeblog API and RSS 2.0, so that their weblog software can participate in the tools market, and hook seamlessly into aggregators. If there's a problem doing this, please contact me, in confidence, if necessary. |
 
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