Angry Dave

Authored by Michael Pate on June 28th, 2003 at 9:12 PM

Dave Winer is angry. Not only that, he has been calling on other people to get angry lately. For a while, I couldn’t figure out why? Now I think I understand.

Dave is afraid. What is he afraid of? BigCo’s. That has been a recurring theme in his writing over the years. That big companies were going to come along and ruin things for everyone else. Originally, Netscape fell in with them, but now I think it means mainly Microsoft and Sun. Dave believes that through the long-established tactic of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish, they are going to wrest control of RSS from “us,” and destroy it. It seems the only way Dave sees to prevent that from happening, though, is to give complete control of RSS to him.

Dave doesn’t trust standards organizations. He believes they only serve the interest of the BigCo’s. We can’t trust them. Who can we trust? Robert Scobles says Dave. Dave once took time to emphasize that Userland is not Microsoft. Dave, who is obviously still angry, over the existence of RSS 1.0, for reasons not everyone fathoms.

Dave is blaming the entire Echo Project on Tim Bray. Who do I credit with getting the project started? Why, Dave himself. Dave, who started the whole process with his now legendary post about Blogging formats. When Movable Type users and others asked what he meant, he refused to answer. Finally, we were told:

Movable Type users, predictably flame me for advocating a time-tested way of evolving software, explained by Don Park. In so many ways we’re hitting the reset button on old practices that worked. Embrace & Extend is respectful. Eventually SixApart will want the respect, when an upstart (or an old fart) implements something called Trackback that doesn’t work with theirs. Users, of course, don’t have to understand this. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant. And one day it would be great if vendors asked their users not to flame their critics or competitors. One can hope. - Dave Winer

Why was it predictable that he would be flamed by Movable Type users? Why wouldn’t he answer anyone’s questions for so very long? Why did Dave wait nearly 9 months to complain that Mark Pilgrim implemented his RSS 2.0 Template in a matter other than Dave thought correct? Why should we distrust standards organizations and trust only in Dave? Why did Dave seek to trademark RSS? Why should we distrust BigCo’s and trust only in Dave? Why does Dave seem to go out of his way to attack his competitors and their products? Why should Blogger adopt the BloggerAPI when Ev says it does not meet his needs? Why does Dave seem to dislike trackback so much? Why is it that if RSS is such an important standard, most people I talk to about it, I have to explain what it is and how it works?