Mr Safe: Tim Bray said you're all washed up, kind of like Charles Goldfarb.

Dave Winer has done a tremendous amount of work on RSS and invented important parts of it and deserves a huge amount of credit for getting us as far as we have. However, just looking around, I observe that there are many people and organizations who seem unable to maintain a good working relationship with Dave.

I regularly get pissed-off at Dave but I really truly do think he's trying to Do The Right Thing; but there are many people out there who can't get past being pissed off. This is what life is like.

There's an uncannny echo here, for me. The thing that came before XML was called SGML. SGML was largely invented, and its landscape dominated, by a burly, bearded, brilliant New Yorker, Charles Goldfarb, who is currently making a well-deserved killing bringing out the Definitive XML Series of books for Prentice-Hall. Charles is loquacious, persistent, smart, loud-voiced, and nearly always gets his way.

There were a lot of people out there (still are, I guess) whom Charles drives completely nuts and just won't work with him. Which is one of the reasons that, when we invented XML, we felt the need to give it a new name and a new acronym and so on. Mind you, Charles, who as I said is no dummy, climbed on board the XML bandwagon about fifteen seconds after it got rolling and was a major help in getting the thing finished and delivered.

I'm very confused about this. Dave (or rather, Mr Safe) says that Tim Bray said something nasty about him here. In fact, Dave says that Tim said he's all washed up, like Charles Goldfarb.

But as I read it, I'd love to be washed up like Charles Goldfarb, seeing as he's "currently making a well-deserved killing bringing out ... books for Prentice-Hall", having "climbed on board the XML bandwagon about fifteen seconds after it got rolling and was a major help in getting the thing finished and delivered". Sounds like Mr. Goldfarb is still very active in his community, still considered an authority, and is being rewarded for it. I hope I'm that kind of washed up someday.

In fact, it'd be pretty keen if that's what people meant if someday they said, "Les is Dead", though I can't find where Tim said that.

So, where's the nastiness? It's not like Tim took notes from Mark's spanish lessons and told Dave to go "chinga tu madre" or "come verga". That's nasty. Far as I can tell, Tim compared Dave to a guy in another community who has his own contingent of haters yet is still undeniably a brilliant guy just trying to Do The Right Thing as he sees it.

Was the nastiness in saying that some people can't "maintain a good working relationship with Dave"? Or that Tim gets "regularly ... pissed-off at Dave"? I mean, they're both obviously true. It would have been nasty and untrue had Tim said that no one can maintain a good relationship with Dave, because there are also obviously a lot of people who do. But, Tim didn't say that.

So, as far as I see, I'd personally be happy to have Tim Bray write about me like this in public.

shortname=washed_up_huh