Adam Kalsey

BTW, Adam Kalsey wrote me a kind email where he said. “It occurred to me that in all this mess, no one has asked you why you froze the RSS and XML-RPC specs. Why did you freeze the RSS and XML-RPC specs?” I wrote Adam a lengthy reply, but then realized my post in response to Simon, above, was actually a concise repsonse to that question. Simon asks Is it safe to start? As a designer of a new protocol I have to decide. Am I willing to live with this API forever? I give it some thought. Based on past experience — yes. I know there are limits, things I'd like it to do that it can't do. On the other hand, I weigh that against the amount of time I have to put into it, now and in the future, against the value of having other developers pushing this into other environments. As with all things software, there are tradeoffs. Given more time it would get better. But people would lose interest. A better spec that no one else implements isn't worth anything. So back to Adam's question. RSS is frozen, as is XML-RPC, as a signal to developers that it's safe to implement. We won't rip up the rail and abandon your town. Dear developer, go ahead and build. It's safe. [Scripting News]

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