Canter’s Law #1
I’ve been getting feedback on a new project - which we’ll announce at Web 2.0 and pushback on some of my ideas. Folks have been quoting Postel’s Law to me.
So I just wanted to time stamp this moment and spiel out Canter’s Law #1. This will make sense - later. But for now - today - I wanted to get this down:
Canter’s Law #1:
- It is not a bad thing to make everyone happy. It sometimes requires compromises, but at the end of the day – by getting around the format Wars – we all benefit.
- So though we understand that having too many formats may confuse or muddy the waters – it won’t be muddy to the constituents of each format. Most developers will adhere to ONE philosophy and the others – will appreciate support for all.
- See Flickr
No human cares about what format is supported. Only us. Flickr proved that they could be completely format agnostic and provide a compelling experience to all.
We believe in compatiblity boxes. It provides a competative advantage - by being compatible with everybody - whether they’re a file format or feed format.
God bless micro-content. Thank you Anil.
FOLLOWUP: More than one person has pointed me to the original RFC (from 1981) and the Wikipedia entry.
November 20th, 2005 at 8:59 am
[…] Also we promise that this will support every kind of format there is, in every syndication f ormat, page tag and file format youc na think of. We prescribe to Canter’s Law #1. […]
November 20th, 2005 at 9:54 am
[…] That’s Canter’s Law #1. […]
December 30th, 2005 at 3:14 pm
[…] Remember: - we’re 100% microformats compatible - despite what some folks have insinuated - we’re more than just page tags, we’re also about subscription formats, file formats and working together - anyone who says “my format is better than your format” - is not us. We are everyone. We are not just ONE format. […]
March 28th, 2006 at 3:35 am
[…] Richard MacManus is writing an interesting series of posts about microcontent design (more here). I agree with most of Richard’s ideas and with some of the problems he forsees for microcontent. There is, however, one important point take I’d like to take issue with. Richard metions Canter’s Law #1: it basically says: support all formats and don’t take sides, because the user doesn’t care about your geeky format wars. As Marc put it : “No human cares about what format is supported. Only us. Flickr proved that they could be completely format agnostic and provide a compelling experience to all.” […]
April 16th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
[…] We’ll cosy up to and support NetVibes, Pageflakes, Omnidrives, Box.net - all sorts of media repositories and the new era of aggregators - like Plum and dabble. We’ll also strive to support all the myriad of module/widget formats - like the ones coming out from AOL, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and SixApart. We want to be everyone’s friend. You HAVE to - to be a true DLA and adhere to Canter’s Law #1. […]
August 4th, 2006 at 11:52 am
I saw that you have a page that discusses patent-related resources at http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2005/09/canters_law_1. I wanted to suggest adding www.freepatentsonline.com to the page. This web site has free PDF downloading (instead of having to page through TIFFs like at the US PTO). It is by far the best free patent searching site.