inessential by Brent Simmons

RSS Spec Moves to Berkman, Advisory Board Formed

UserLand has transferred ownership of its RSS 2.0 spec to Berkman. The spec is now licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license. An advisory board was formed to support and advocate RSS.

That’s where I come in: I’m on the advisory board. Its initial members are Dave Winer, Jon Udell, and me.

I think this is a very good move for RSS.

Dan Gillmor has a good overview in RSS Moves a Step Forward.

Two questions have come up so far regarding my participation in the advisory board. I’ll answer them:

1. Do I own stock in UserLand?

No.

2. Given that I used to work for UserLand, will I be independent, or will I vote as Dave votes?

I have and will continue to vote independently.

If you want some evidence of my independence, an obvious thing is that NetNewsWire and Radio UserLand are competing products. Both are RSS aggregators; both run on OS X. They work together, too—you can post to a Radio weblog from NetNewsWire—but NetNewsWire also works in the same way with Blogger, Blosxom, Movable Type, and other systems.

I could go on, but I hope that’s enough.

If you have other questions about my participation, please feel free to email me or add a comment to this site.