Re: Shipping Atom products prematurely

[Dare Obasanjo <kpako@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Mark Nottingham <mnot@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> I've just changed the old, pre-WG drafts that I host
> on mnot.net to 
> clearly state that they're not to be implemented,
> and are superseded by 
> the work here.
> 
> One of the things that drove me to do this is the
> increasing incidence 
> of vendors shipping products and services that
> "support" Atom, even 
> though it's clearly marked as a pre-draft (on my
> site) and only for 
> experimental implementation (in the WG's drafts).

I know what you mean. I pinged a contact of one of the
vendors whose support of Atom was all over the news of
what they plan to do when Atom becomes final since I'm
worried about what could happen to the thousands of
RSS Bandit users that could be shafted if they switch
Atom versions. The response I got was basically
'Marketing will figure it out', I would have pressed
the point but Sam [Ruby] was on the email thread and
he claimed that such a discussion wasn't fruitful or
something similar so I let it go. 


> Working on experimental Atom implementations is
> great because it helps 
> us get experience and find problems. However,
> shipping it in 
> mass-market products before it's done is likely to
> lead to a lot of 
> interoperability problems, end-user support issues
> and even barriers to 
> adoption as the spec matures.
> 
> As such, I think the WG should proactively contact
> vendors of consumer 
> products and services and ask them to refrain from
> integrating Atom 
> support until it's done. They have the best of
> intentions by supporting 
> Atom, but may do more harm than good by accelerating
> the adoption of it 
> prematurely.

I'm not sure what you expect to happen here. For those
that have already deployed draft verions of Atom the
horse has already left the barn. The best the WG can
do is find out what they plan to do in future when
newer drafts show up or the specs become final. 

For those that haven't deployed the drafts unless you
have access to the precrime unit from Minority Report
there isn't anyway to contact them and tell them not
to do it. :) 

> I'm not naming names here, but I have two vendors in
> particular in 
> mind. I *don't* mean the smaller aggregator-only
> vendors or personal 
> blogs who have made a choice to experimentally
> support Atom; I mean 
> those that are pushing Atom to an audience who
> doesn't understand what 
> the issues are.

Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by
incompetence[0]

[0]
http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=49b611e5-3788-4921-8b55-00fc08de7e9e 

=====
THINGS TO DO IF I BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD #25
No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.


	
		
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