Tim Bray wrote:
+1.
The objections to this fall into two forms:
1. We don't have prior art in the syndication space that proves this is needed.
2. This is someone else's problem, e.g. SOAP
I can see both those arguments, but when I re-visit and re-read this, the implementation is so falling-off-a-log obvious, like one small subroutine, that if you're doing cost/benefit math, the cost is very close to zero.
Hi Tim,
I haven't decided yet. I would dearly like a sane way to inform the downstream to Look Here. But I'm concerned; my expectation based on experience with this sort of thing is that many people will think their element must be understood and will not always consider that the other data can be understood or useful without their specific extension - this is a bit like the unwillingness to prioritize requirements in a software project ("we have to have it all").
And it does seem to me to introduce barriers to content and/or incidental complexity - I can't easily buy into the zero cost argument when I consider the content. I believe mU might result in inaccessible feeds and/or format extension wars fought by proxy. I don't even want to think about what nastiness could happen in DRM, copyright or inline advertising scenarios. For example, I think mU could be used to introduce machine processable rights declarations by stealth, something we have already agreed to stay away from for now.
I guess my main concern is that mU is not so much a technical mechanism for managing change, but a policy mechanism for controlling access.
cheers Bill
