Meet the new boss
What’s the acronym for “rolling on the floor, choking and gasping while pissing myself”? Oh, yeah.
ROTFC&GWPM!
Welcome a new shooter (yup, intended) to the Syndication Wars! Daniel Henry’s SDF would like to be the one true format that sneaks through the underspecified, overspecified, overacrimonious mess we currently have, to be so clear and pure and safe and flexible that Aunt Tillie will hand-code her recipies in it while her nephew Mr. Safe convinces his company to publish every word they emit in it as well.
Eh, it only took me about ten minutes to support it (assuming my current minimal version is right): index.sdf.
Oh, you won’t actually be able to conveniently follow that link, will you? Between the type application/sdf+xml and the fact that SDF mandates that all links to its files be in the sdf: pseudo-protocol, you’ll need to install an SDF reader, and have it register as an SDF handler.
But the “my way or the highway” fun doesn’t stop there: at the top of the spec is a warm-fuzzy Creative Commons (by-nd) license, but at the bottom is:
Closed extension
Closed extension means that absolutely no one but the collective authors of this specification are granted the right to create future versions of the SDF document type. SDF has been copyrighted, trademarked and/or patented in a very strong effort on the part of Howell Developments to protect SDF from possible version skew. Anyone and everyone has been granted irrevocable permissions to produce products that use this specification to generate, catalogue, digest or use SDF documents for any purpose they wish.
However, these legal protections have been put in place to ensure that the definition of SDF documents is held centrally, as one source upon which all parties may rely, as should be the case with any true standard. Howell Developments reserves the right to pursue legal action against any entity that threatens to destabilize SDF by producing alternate versions of this document type.
Um. The specification is controlled by a working group appointed by a single vendor, who will hunt down anyone who dares use the letters SDF for anything vaguely related to syndication like a rabid dog.
Christ. This stuff writes itself.
(Via the fun folks at TheRSSWeblog)
My first thought was sarcasm when I saw the first posts trickling through about Yet Another Format. But to be fair, in the discussion forums on the site for SDF Daniel Henry does say that the verbiage about the closed format is there to avoid forks that have caused all the troubles we are now facing with RSS and (it seems) he wouldn’t have a problem with development being done by a standards body or working group.
In reality, though, the only ”solution” to this problem will be technological evolution. There are too many personalities who have too much ego invested (on both sides) to allow for much else.
The world of syndication is a huge battle ground where many formats fight to come out on top. SDF is no exception to this rule, however it does appear to traverse beyond just ”syndication” and instead provide a better vehicle for ”content delivery”. For that reason alone, I feel it’s far better than many of the syndication formats that are out there right now that people (incorrectly) use for content delivery.
I think you misread the specification when it came to the part about how to link to an SDF document (using the ”sdf:” protocol extension). If you re-read the specification again here, you’ll notice that it specifically says ”This section defines best practices for including links to SDF documents on web pages.” … meaning that it’s not actually REQUIRED that you use ”sdf:” in your URL. I’m personally torn between adding a new protocol extension, or merely just allowing the client to do its own thing based on the file extension/mime-type of the file. But that’s a whole-nother discussion that I don’t want to get into here.
The ”Closed Extension” seems to be one of your biggest problems with this. Try to take this a little less seriously than it appears… legal print always looks like that.
Chris L pointed it out correctly that the problem with any new standard once adoption of it becomes popular is the possibility of version forking among individuals or groups of people who think they can take the existing specification and make it better, the best example of this being the entire RSS/RDF hell. Considering that HowDev is incredibly dedicated to all forms of syndication, I’m sure that they would be open to suggestions or collaborations with others in regards to specification advancement.
Wow, a mysterious new syndication format, complete with patents, vendor lock-in, and a complete lack of extensibility… coupled with mysterious supporters coming out of the woodwork on day 1. *DAY 1*. Do you get paid for this, or are you doing it for free?
> the problem with any new standard once adoption of it becomes popular is the possibility of version forking among individuals or groups of people who think they can take the existing specification and make it better, the best example of this being the entire RSS/RDF hell…
Yes, well, if Dave hadn’t stolen the specification from Netscape, we’d all be a lot better off today. We are all doomed to live with the consequences of others’ mistakes. Isn’t that enough? Must we strive to make our own as well?
I might have put it a little more temperately ;), but, yes: if you want to go around supporting SDF in weblog comments, that’s great, good for you, but if you don’t add on a last name and a link to something which provides more information about who you are and what your stake is, Mark’s will probably wind up being one of the more moderate reactions.
The salient point here is that the technical quality of the proposed alternative really doesn’t matter much given the environment into which it is being introduced. I don’t think the ”closed” extensions are particularly relevant either.
By far the most likely future for SDF is that it there will be a brief but intense flurry of commentary about it that is really a guise for discussing the RSS/Atom controversy and then it fades away. Or it becomes Yet Another Format causing more fractures frustrating for developers and users alike.