Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

xml-dev posting

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:5/9/1999; 10:24:50 AM
Topic:Update on My.UserLand.Com
Msg #:5891 (In response to 5883)
Prev/Next:5890 / 5892

Here's a message I posted this morning to the XML-DEV list, the list of record for the XML developer community.

In March we decided that RSS-based syndication was too good to pass up, so we quickly built a syndication server in Frontier 6 to compete with My.Netscape.Com. Netscape welcomed us by adding them to their directory. (Thanks Netscape!)

RSS is an XML-based format that represents what we in the Frontier community call a "weblog". It's frequently updated site that points to stories on and off-site, that identifies an audience and feeds links to them. Until RSS came along the only format people were using was HTML. RSS changed that.

The Motley Fool, Mozilla.Org and Slashdot are examples of online services that are supporting RSS. We're rendering them using Frontier's content management system, for now in HTML. But we are also getting ready to do an open source release of our server software, and all its interfaces will be in XML and XML-RPC, so we're not wanting to be in a controlling position from a standpoint of software or registrations. We are not using RSS to artificially drive sales of our CMS, we want to win because we're the best, not because we have a corner on the market. (Hint to Vignette.)

We've decided to open the whole thing. It's too good to try to hold onto. We're doing easy to use software to develop and maintain weblog sites, and of course they will all aggregate using the next generation of RSS and today's RSS. Who knows in what perverted ways this content will flow around the net? I'm totally looking forward to the creative chaos that's coming!

Today's milestone is that we're publishing the list of URLs that have been registered so far. This is a dynamic list, it's recalc'd every time you hit the page.

http://my.userland.com/xml/serviceList.xml

From the XML-DEV perspective, the milestone is that XML is catching up with content developers. It's not too complex and the rewards are not elusive. Put up an RSS version of your site, and you get more flow. An obvious benefit.

Tomorrow we'll release the source code for the server and during the next few weeks we'll add XML-RPC interfaces and document them.

Dave Winer

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