Dave Winer deserves respect. I might be suffering from Scripting News blitzing (and I therefore unsubscribed; tech.memeorandum will dig out Winer’s good stories anyway), yet I think we owe this man a lot – if I’m reading tech history properly. For Dave Winer is, in a way, Tim-Berners Lee successor. While TBL created this World Wide Platform for storing Information, DW “let this Info go”. Being the creator of RSS, and/or member of the teams that created the different RSS versions, DW could well be named the Liberator of the World Wide Information, liberation which gave birth to the interactive web 2.0.
After this intro, I should set your expectations right away: Dave Winer is not as philosophical as TBL, nor as visionary as Tim O’Reilly… 
He is, in a way, a symbol of simplicity: in his tools, in his standards, in his posts and in his thoughts. He’s the K.I.S.S. man, and that’s what’s so remarkable.
Final note: Winer was among the co-authors of the early SOAP, but as things have become too complex he left. Yet, here’s a surprise: Winer never meant SOAP to become what it is today. Application integration? Business Transactions? Not at all. For Winer, SOAP was meant to be an easier standard for… publishing content over the web.
p.s. Winer is behind many things, not just RSS.
Technopod Rating: 9
Dave Winer 01:09:05, 31.6 mb, Oct 27th, 2004
Original Podlink: Dave Winer – Behind the Mic
References:
RSS History (as told by no other than… Dave Winer)
