Comments on: Our own 100 years War http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2004/10/our_own_100_yea Digital Lifestyle Aggregation - helping to establish open source infrastructure Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:54:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Danny http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2004/10/our_own_100_yea#comment-1905 Danny Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://marc_blogs_it.myelin.co.nz/?p=1712#comment-1905 Heh, I was going to comment saying pretty much the same as Joshua. Regarding the holy war, there's still the occasional skirmish, but from what I've seen on some of the lists in recent months (particularly Atom's) there's a lot more effort going into finding positions in which everyone's reasonably comfortable. In general more people are recognising the benefits of the RDF model (and the app list is growing), and it's impossible to ignore the widespread deployment of domain-specific XML like RSS 2.0. So I'm optimistic that less energy is going into futile arguments and more into making the Web an interesting place. On the point of argument in the mail, I do reckon the layering thing is still an open question - where should the lines be drawn between transport, metadata and content. All three are really just data, after all. I'm just uneasy at the idea of turning something full of structure and external linkage into an opaque blob. Oh yeah, an don't forget Joshua's a nice guy! Heh, I was going to comment saying pretty much the same as Joshua.

Regarding the holy war, there’s still the occasional skirmish, but from what I’ve seen on some of the lists in recent months (particularly Atom’s) there’s a lot more effort going into finding positions in which everyone’s reasonably comfortable.

In general more people are recognising the benefits of the RDF model (and the app list is growing), and it’s impossible to ignore the widespread deployment of domain-specific XML like RSS 2.0. So I’m optimistic that less energy is going into futile arguments and more into making the Web an interesting place.

On the point of argument in the mail, I do reckon the layering thing is still an open question - where should the lines be drawn between transport, metadata and content. All three are really just data, after all. I’m just uneasy at the idea of turning something full of structure and external linkage into an opaque blob.

Oh yeah, an don’t forget Joshua’s a nice guy!

]]> By: Joshua Allen http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2004/10/our_own_100_yea#comment-1904 Joshua Allen Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://marc_blogs_it.myelin.co.nz/?p=1712#comment-1904 Hi Marc, I appreciate your eagerness to identify and dissipate holy wars or "pointless" conversations (I feel the same way), but I believe you might have been too obstreperous to draw conclusions about the e-mail thread you posted above. It's a bit funny to see myself being characterized as anti-RDF. I have been criticized for being too *pro* RDF, for being too idealistic in my evangelism of the triples data model, and I am the first to argue that XML and RDF are naturally at peace (and for example, I wrote the FOAF importer for WinFS to show that WinFS is not all that incompatible with RDF). And none of this is really very secret about me. Now, I agree that there have been holy wars between XML and RDF, but think we are mostly past those as a community. The two can and do complement one another. The real difference in perspective (if there is one) between Danny and me highlighted in the quoted e-mail thread regards the appropriate amount of "layering" in a protocol like Atom/RSS which is intended to be a transport. For example, FOAF/RDF files are transported very effectively over HTTP, but HTTP does not need to have any knowledge of RDF. I don't think it would be effective at all to try baking RDF concepts into HTTP. Same with RSS, SMTP, NNTP, or any other transport mechanism. Hi Marc,

I appreciate your eagerness to identify and dissipate holy wars or “pointless” conversations (I feel the same way), but I believe you might have been too obstreperous to draw conclusions about the e-mail thread you posted above.

It’s a bit funny to see myself being characterized as anti-RDF. I have been criticized for being too *pro* RDF, for being too idealistic in my evangelism of the triples data model, and I am the first to argue that XML and RDF are naturally at peace (and for example, I wrote the FOAF importer for WinFS to show that WinFS is not all that incompatible with RDF). And none of this is really very secret about me.

Now, I agree that there have been holy wars between XML and RDF, but think we are mostly past those as a community. The two can and do complement one another.

The real difference in perspective (if there is one) between Danny and me highlighted in the quoted e-mail thread regards the appropriate amount of “layering” in a protocol like Atom/RSS which is intended to be a transport. For example, FOAF/RDF files are transported very effectively over HTTP, but HTTP does not need to have any knowledge of RDF. I don’t think it would be effective at all to try baking RDF concepts into HTTP. Same with RSS, SMTP, NNTP, or any other transport mechanism.

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