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Okay, now Dave is starting to scare me
As I’ve said before, I think Dave Winer - one of the first bloggers, and the guy who created the specification for RSS or “really simple syndication” - has a couple of different personalities. There’s the nice Dave, who gives advice to new bloggers and sort of sees himself as the eminence grise of the Web, the one who also wants to be part of the whole blogosphere as it develops — but that can quickly turn into the other Dave, who gets all snippy when he doesn’t get invited to speak at conferences to pass on his wisdom.
“I felt so wronged, why do they lie about these things, don’t they know eventually they’ll get caught in the lies, or don’t they care. (BTW, that includes Scoble too, I asked why he didn’t give me a heads up, and the answer was unsatisfying.)”
This is an ongoing theme with Dave - and it’s tied into another one, which is that everyone steals things from him:
“Now I see things a bit more clearly, it looks like Esther wants us to think these are her ideas, and how inconvenient it would be to have the person whose ideas they really are, there, in the flesh, explaining how the stuff really works.”
Of course, this then leads us into the whole RSS thing, about which there has probably been enough written already, where Dave tries to stop anyone who is doing anything with RSS - all the while protesting that he doesn’t want to be the “Lord God of RSS.”
But now there are signs of a different side to Dave - a kind of scary side. Here’s what he said on Sunday:
“Why not wait until after the OPML Editor 1.0 release ships to try to hijack the format. After that I won’t fight with you. I probably won’t even fight very much now. The fight has pretty much gone out of me.”
I’m feeling the stress of all the fighting, and age… Why not let me go, quietly and peacefully, I’ll stop writing my blog, I’ll stop developing new stuff, you can be me if you want, I won’t be in your way.
Whoa, Dave. Take it easy, dude. Just because you didn’t get to speak at SXSW and Rogers Cadenhead tried to set up an advisory board on RSS, that’s no reason to start talking crazy. Update: Now Dave has taken things a step further and says he’s planning to stop blogging altogether.
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You actually tag the posting with “Winer” - its should be “Whiner” :)-
yes, Dave’s attitude is certainly coming to the forefront and it does not look very promising !!
he sounds like a sad and/or angry man.
I’ve faced a similar battleground when years ago my partner and I tried to convince a skeptical world for the need for real time data compression for the web. Everyone said it couldn’t be done, and even if we did no one would care.
I had many run-in’s with Dave, he even banned me from emailing him. He told me I was wasting my time. He still doesn’t compress the data coming from his site.
Well we prevailed, mod_gzip has become the standard for compressing data from an Apache 1.x web server.
Now Dave is facing his own demons with RSS… I’ve got some advice for him – stop arguing in public, flex your programming muscles and do something remarkable. Let the code do the talking.
Software is so much hype. The reality is usually pretty dismal… look at the state of the browsers after all these years. Make RSS into something better. Build a Mobile spec for it… you know people are going to need it on their smartphones.
People will always bitch about something, and then they’ll usually turn around and start using it. It’s the price you pay for being on the edge.
Uh, so how’s that vacation goin’ there, ‘thewie? ;-)
Seriously, I suggest you kick back, refresh, renew - hey, you don’t want to end up angry, sad, burnt out, w(h)ine-y…
- Stuart
Unfortunately, none of this is new. Go back over the annals of Dave Winer and you’ll find he’s done this sort of pity-me posturing before. Sad stuff.
I’m sorry, was that start talking crazy…?
It’s a great way to drive traffic. In fact, I think i’m gonna go post something and link to him right now. Instant memeorandum.
have to be a line in the sand or olive branch. Can’t we just talk about stuff and if we don’t agree, so what? 3) I like being talked to, not at. Old school web sites were at. The blogosphere is at least to, if not with. 4) Mathew Ingram has alreadygot it covered. 5) I don’t think Dave wants to be a part of the blogging culture. He says he does, but I don’t buy it. I think he’s the farmer and we’re the ants. I don’t mind being an ant as long as I don’t know I’m an ant.
let him go. he is old, bitter and increasingly irrelevant
[...] What’s the big deal? If the guy is done getting picked on and criticized, or praised and glorified, then let him be done. My guess is that many of you will continue doing what you are doing anyway. I get the feeling you’ll miss Dave’s blog as much as you missed the A-Team when it went off the air. For many of you this will be not at all. [...]
“Just because you didn’t get to speak at SXSW and Rogers Cadenhead tried to set up an advisory board on RSS, that’s no reason to start talking crazy.”
Rogers didn’t create the RSS Advisory board - Dave Winer did. At one stage Winer invited Rogers aboard, and then Winer quit. The RSS Advisory Board’s mission was to guide/advise adopters of RSS. Here’s the details of the RSS Advisory Board
Thanks for that info, Isofarro.
Mathew
possible by the end of 2006. Dave, no. This isn’t allowed. Scripting News was the first blog I read, starting with an email subscription, then RSS. … # gapingvoid / when god - [Inspired by Dave Winer's recent post.] # mathewingram.com/work / Okay, now Dave is starting to scare me - As I’ve said before, I think Dave Winer - one of the first bloggers, and the guy who created the specification for RSS or “really simple syndication” - has a couple of different personalities. There’s the nice Dave, who gives advice to new bloggers
Okay, now Dave is starting to scare me
Sounds like a human being…
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