I’m for the Open Web
I’ve been struggling with the relevance of Data Portability for the last few months now. The ideas around Data Portability have been a work-in-progress for several years; the technologies and communities building them are mature in every way. In this post, I want to try to explain my reasons for leaving the Data Portability project and why I think the Open Web is significantly more important.
I know when I was first introduced to Data Portability I was skeptical but when the ensuing media circus flooded the blogosphere, I had no choice but to jump right in. Many of the people developing the open protocols co-opted by the Data Portability project have hinted (both publicly and privately) at leaving. Others have just outright left.
I don’t have a problem with Data Portability as a whole as much as I do with its leader, Chris Saad. The lack of clarity of vision, the delusions of grandeur and blatant pandering are so frustrating to someone such as myself that has worked so hard to actually
First of all, a little history.
David Recordon and I made a point of inviting Chris Saad out to the Social Graph FooCamp in February 2008 as Data Portability was really starting to take the main stage. On the last day, at the eleventh hour, Saad led a talk on Data Portability that got rather heated. Chris Messina, Joseph Smarr, Jeremy Keith, Tantek and many, many others were there saying the same thing: we’re already having these discussions, why do we have to do it now at dataportability.org? We left Sebastopol that afternoon hoping to have Chris Saad really carry on the conversation with the wider audience he had brought to the table. Instead, we continued to hear more calls of “come join the conversation on dataportability.org” coupled with empty press releases instead of real leadership.
At the Data Sharing Workshop where Marc Canter put it all into context for me (and then he prodded me again yesterday). Data Portability is about APML riding along with the rest of the well-known and established Open Web protocols.
Marc and I have had our differences in the past, but on this we both agree.
I’ve always been in the Chris Messina Don’t-stab-babies-in-the-face camp with respect to data portability. Lower-case data portability embodies many of the same ideals around the Open Web. Many small open building blocks, loosely joined helping to enable data exchange and control for users. How can you not like that?!
My reasons are particularly personal for not wanting to participate in Data Portability anymore. I’ve spent close to the last two years chairing the OpenID Foundation board. I’ve seen a fantastic community coalesce out of nothing to create a technology that has been widely adopted. When Data Portability pulled OpenID into its technology stack, I was actually really excited. However, with the expectations set by the media around Data Portability and the lack of follow-through has the potential to negatively impact all of the hard work by these existing communities have done.
My tipping point about this came earlier this week when Jive Software joined the Data Portability group. I love the folks at Jive, have known them for years and always wish them well. However, its a bummer that even folks from my hometown can be misled by this DP media hoopla. When I read Sam Lawrence say:
In the meantime, we’re interested in working with the Data Portability group to help contribute to these standards as well as new ones as well. Hopefully, the organization is now at a point in its evolution to proceed with formal and elected leadership, a standards body, voting process and the rest of the stuff that makes organizations successful.
I realized even Jive had been fooled by the hype around Data Portability. DP is not about creating new technology:
Some things that The DataPortability Project is not:
- We are not a group focused on creating new technologies. DataPortability intends to work with tools that already exist today.
- The group is primarily focused on consumer facing technologies and not those aimed at corporate internal use.
Chris was quoted in Jive’s press release. He knew about this announcement. And yet, as he did with the “Data Availability” release that MySpace did, he opted to “take-all-comers” instead of stay focused on the specific mission of the Data Portabililty project.
More importantly, its not where the discussions about these protocols are happening. They are already happening on openid.net, oauth.net, microformats.org and many, many others. I’m excited to see people talking about OpenID within the Data Portability project, but I feel like they are actually taking away from the existing communities
I put the blame for this type of messaging and lack of clarity squarely on the back of Chris Saad. I’m actually really amazed at the quality of people that have joined the Data Portability community. They are well-spoken, understand the meaning of collaborative discussion and are very passionate about the project itself. But Chris hasn’t shown the ability to stick to the goals and mission of his organization and community. In fact, the
David Recordon is on the right track; how do you support the Open Web? To me, the Open Web is what this is all about. The Open Web is the key to the centralized me or citizen-centric web we hear so many people talking about. Without interoperable formats and protocols, all of this stuff will be a pipe dream.
Instead of just complaining, I’m going to continue focusing my efforts where I think I can make the most impact. I’m going to continue working hard to promote and enable the OpenID community, I’m going to continue to encourage and engage in discussions with projects like OAuth, microformats, DiSo and others and I encourage everyone to join me in doing the same.
Right on brother. I couldn’t have it better myself.
There are lots of great people involved with Dataportability.org – like Daniela Barbosa and Phil Wolff. The mail list is compelling – but calling Chris Saad’s link blog the DP.org blog is yet another example that DP.org is Chris personal playpen and is all about promoting Chris and APML.
Well that’s simple ot seal with.
Goodbye Chris. Goodbye APML.
Hello Open Web
Thank you for laying it out without skirting the real issues. Hopefully more and more people will come to realise the hypewagon of DP is exactly that. I think I’m quoting you when I say “lead with code.” That’s what I want to see – and DP doesn’t have that and never will.
I suspect this was a hard post to write and perhaps an even harder post to publish. Thank you for speaking up. The emperor, does in fact, have no clothes.
I’ve only paid the DP site and associated blog passing attention because it always seems to be fluff. I love videos, they look great, but cool motion graphics are not the type of forward movement the citizens of the web need. And I say that as a design junkie that enjoys a bit of eye candy with his hype now and again.
It is unfortunate that DP is going no where fast, and it is a little sad that it is likely impossible to turn it around. DP showed a lot of energy and enthusiasm early on and could have helped mobilize the more general public, raising awareness and shifting perception. That’s not what happened — at least not in a good way.
The important thing is to keep the focus on the real progress that has been made by the loosely joined communities and hard-working few that have inspired forward progress through careful thought and actual code.
Scott, some valid points – my one issue is with this quote:
“Data Portability is about APML riding along with the rest of the well-known and established Open Web protocols.”
Let us not forget that RSS, OpenID, and other technologies of the like were once in the same exact position APML is today – widely unestablished and widely unsupported. To write off a certain technology simply because “it’s new” isn’t, in my opinion, a valid reason. Imagine if RSS was originally bashed to the point of abandonment back in 1999!
I remember myself bashing both RSS and OpenID initially because I couldn’t see the value they would bring to me. Now, I use both everyday like second nature.
If someone has had success with APML in achieving some sort of portable data success, I’d love to hear about it. If someone has had success with some technology most have never heard of – I’d like to hear about that as well. I see no harm in DataPortability SUGGESTING a stack of technologies (including APML) that could prove useful to implementers.
I’m aware this is only one small facet of your gripe with DataPortability, but one I felt should be contested nonetheless.
Just a few thoughts.
Cheers,
Tim
Hi Scott,
Whilst I can’t speak on behalf of Chris Saad – that’s your own personal issue – I can speak for the DataPortability Project as a co-founder and active participant.
As a community, we still have not formalised our organisation – or rather, we are evolving from our experiences to date. We are onto the finishing touches for a new governance model that will more clearly outlay how decisions get made, who can makes decisions, and embedding various processes for an effective workflow into the DNA of the organisation (accountability, milestones, ownership). As the chairperson of a foundation, you clearly would understand the challenges of managing an open community, let alone creating the foundations. .
So it’s unfortunate, that you choose to downplay recognition that we are genuinely trying and with that effort it will take us a long time. We are a baby – exactly that – and yet the criticism of the DataPortability Project has come from people that never fully supported the Project in the first place. I won’t go into details as that’s not my style, but to allude with “we joined, but now we leave in disgust” is not reflective of what actually happened. It’s more like a ‘who the hell are you guys to get all this attention’ which evolved to ‘you don’t have the right’ to now which is ‘you are no longer relevant because you haven’t produced anything’. Whilst the cricitism is nothing new, and in fact welcome as we can learn from it, I fear these comments are affecting future participants, which will kill our organisation when we are still trying to learn how to walk. In some cases, they are mispresenting what we aim to do.
Like I did with Eran, I am more than happy to have you blast your issues with me over the phone and I will listen. I will transcribe what you state, and then come to a resolution on what you think we need to do – and engage the DataPortability community to provide answers and come to consensus. But other than that, there is not much we as an organisation can do – certainly, us being irrelevant to you doesn’t mean it is for others. I work 50 hours a week in financial services (albeit in technology) – DataPortability is my hobby as it is with all the other contributors. I can’t promise immediate results, but I can guarantee that I will honour my commitments for improvement and responding to your views.
You should continue to focus your efforts on where you can make the most impact. But rather than write us off, recognise I want the same things as you do. The negative energy in criticism is depressing if it’s not constructive; I’d love to see more syncronised thinking so we can pursue the vision of an open web together.
Further, I think the expectations on the DataPortability Project are a little unfair. Cutting some code was never our goal so I am not sure what people are expecting to see of the Project, and just doing that, doesn’t mean we achieve what we set out for. The entire web industry frustrates me in that it is so developer-centric. We’ve seen a lot of innovation with web development, but I can’t say we’ve seen much development in the business sense (unless you call an acquisition success). The biggest contribution DataPortability can make is not code, but awareness – education, understanding, advocacy.
We have always been about evangelising existing efforts, and people cannot doubt we haven’t raised awareness in the industry to a different level. To be criticised for all this talk, is just plain silly. The question I ask, if people think we have failed – then what exactly was it you thought we were meant to deliver (growing pains aside)?