Projects need leadership

Phillip Harrington asks…

How do you feel about this NEcho stuff? I’m kind of annoyed by the “we need a new spec and it has to be everything to all people and it’s a democracy etc” feeling of the whole thing. I feel like we’ll get 0.1 alpha some time in 2005.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Someone tries to start a new spec and involve everyone else. They make sure to include everything including the kitchen sink. Eventually it gets bogged down, people lose interest, and the project dies. Then someone steps in and shows leadership. They publish a spec and some working code. Other people adopt it. It becomes a de facto standard.

That’s how the Metaweblog API came about. There were various propsals and discussions about replacing the Blogger API with something robust. No one could agree on all the features. The people who would actually be responsible for implementing this stuff lost interest in the project and left, leaving the idealists to their endless planning.

Then Dave Winer stepped in and implemented something. And it worked. And other people adopted it. Was it perfect? No, and I think Dave would be among the first to admit that.

Regardless of what you may think of Dave personally, he gets things done. They may not be done “the right way,” they may not be perfect, but they exist and they work. Which is more than you can say for most other projects.

The funny thing is, from stuff Dave has said in the past, I think he’d be all for improvements to syndication and API formats. He knows that the formats aren’t perfect and there are lot of smart people out there that could improve on his ideas. But they should be simple, and they shouldn’t use names that he’s come to think of as his own. Don’t call it RSS unless you get his blessing on the format. Fine, I can live with that. He’s done more to advance RSS as a simple way to create syndicated feeds than anyone else so respect his wishes.

This project may succeed where others have failed because it has someone working on it full-time. It’s Sam Ruby’s job to figure this out. IBM is paying him to do it. Sam’s obviously a smart guy, and smarts coupled with financial backing is a powerful thing. But my advice would be for Sam to show some leadership. He’s gotten everyone’s feedback and ideas on what the project should do. Now he should close the discussion, develop a draft spec, and put it out for comment.

There will be people that disagree with the spec. There will be those who want to add this and that to it and turn it into a behemoth. Sam should stick to his principles and only make changes where they make sense. Changes should be the result of compelling arguments, not the result of conflict avoidance.

Being a leader is hard, as both Sam and Dave know. Not everyone will like you if you stand up for your principles. But people don’t lead because they want to be popular.