First, I'm happy to see a discussion resulting from my post -- and
various people taking the time to consider what I was feeling.

To answer Daniela's question: no, I hadn't talked to anyone who really
would consider themselves a "member" of the DP community; I talked to
plenty of people *outside* the community, however, who have both
expressed and mirrored my own frustrations and concerns about the
group and wrote my post because, well, after having plenty of private
conversations, specifically with Chris Saad and, to a lesser extent,
Ben Metcalfe, I felt the need to say something, when the goddamn press
releases didn't stop even after Saad promised me to take the group
down a more "humble" and "grassroots" path at SG FOO. The behavior
indicates that either 1) he was lying to me and had no intention of
changing course 2) that PR for MySpace is something that they can't
afford and represent a new definition of "grassroots" 3) that the DP-
PR machine is simply more effective at taking credit for big moves
that they had nothing directly to do with than to promote smaller
independent, more "grassroots" groups who are *actually* making moves
towards effective data portability, like Dopplr, like TripIt, like
Satisfaction and Twitter and the rest. I don't believe I've seen any
press releases go out about them, and yet I would consider them to be
on the vanguard giving people access to their data in real-world,
useful ways.

So, I also felt like there weren't enough public criticisms about the
group coming out, even though I've been told, plenty of times, in
confidence, that they either 1) don't get what DP is trying to do 2)
feel uncomfortably about the work or the message of the DP group or 3)
really think that DP is just s fly flitting around that needs to be
supported In Name Only, frankly, because it has a good name, and how
could you *not* support people owning their data? I mean, it's like
asking companies to join the "I Don't Stab Babies in their Mouths"
group. Yeah, lemme take that to legal and see what they have to say.
So unfortunately people feel compelled to say that, "well sure, I
support data portability" -- meaning the abstract notion, without any
strings attached -- but oddly, saying that sounds A LOT like "well
sure, I support DataPortability", and when you hear someone speak
these words, well, how is one to know the difference? And therein lies
the rub.

Now, personally it's not that I don't think that the majority members
of this group/community aren't well intentioned. In fact, as I've said
before, I'm sympathetic to the abstract notion of "data portability",
and in fact have been working on solving that problem for the last
several years, even if I never called it that (I never needed to).
However, the biggest thing that this group needs to confront,
existentially, is what you're about, and how you intend to go about
bringing about the change that you want to see. Unfortunately, my
baseline sense is that you're unclear about what the *results* of your
goal actually look like (i.e. when everyone "owns" their own data and
can copy/move/sync/access it, what does that future look like? Are
there more businesses? Fewer? How do companies survive -- better
*thrive* -- in this new bold model?). If you're going to put the goal
of "[promoting] the idea that individuals have control over their data
by determing how they can use it and who can use it", you're putting
technicalities and social engineering as your top priorities, rather
than leading with benefits. I've pointed this out before, but I can
get a full XML data dump of all my Basecamp projects. That is data
portability, since I have control over it, and can determine how and
who can use it. BUT, NO ONE supports Basecamp Data Import, so I'm left
with a smolder pile of cow dung as far as I'm concerned, even though
the Basecamp scenario meets the criteria of the goal of the DP group.
Is that a win? If not, perhaps the direction is somewhat off from
where you need to be heading.

So if we dig deeper into your About document, we can see, in blinding
clarity, how much lip service is paid to the many wonderful open
source principles, ethos and practices that have helped it succeed,
but if you examine the behavior of the group, and I'll single out
Chris Saad since the majority of my interactions with the DP group
have been through and with him, I'd say that you're doing almost the
exact OPPOSITE of everything that you've outlined in your Approach,
Principles and NOT sections.

A few choice cuts:

* Engaging with individuals, services and standards bodies with
similar views where their scope is relevant

--> It is unclear to me how you engage with, in particular, standards
bodies or groups. I don't know what your protocol of engagement is
besides F2F conversations, which are anything but transparent, and I
don't know how 1) members of the DP project announce themselves to
groups that they're joining, or 2) how they report back to members of
this group, and 3) how their involvement or participation affects DP
overall. For example, if you join the microformats mailing lists, is
that redundant since arguably this group is already committed to, and
has a history of promoting, data portability? Would joining be a good
or bad use of a group members' time?

* Identifying new standards that are required to fulfill the data
portability vision

--> if you are inventing nothing new, I can see how outsourcing the
development of certain formats or protocols (they're not standard
until you can run a train across the country on them) is a proper
approach but 1) usually these groups developing such things have their
own interests in mind and don't care/aren't aware of other work 2) how
will you identity holes when you're not actually building anything?
And, just to help me understand, how would you evaluate things like
oEmbed and ODD? If they end up with logos, will they show up on the
homepage? Help me understand the evaluation process of determining
which emerging formats or protocols end up in the DP "social software
stack",

* The DataPortability project intends:
** To be open to anyone, whether individuals, companies or
organizations
** To reach resolution by consensus
** To have transparency in decisions
** To prefer collaboration of existing efforts over invention of new
technologies

I read somewhere that the group intends to do away with all the
politics that have held back previous efforts... Uh, right. Because
the democratic party, which supposedly welcomes everyone and is more
pro-grassroots, is somehow unified and has no internal politics? I
think that, while sheer openness and inclusivity are good values to
have, I think that diversity, in many ways, is even more important. I
think that choosing people to participate in this effort who are
familiar with the issues, who have worked on these problems in the
real world, who have actual customers who *oppose* things like "data
portability" is critical to developing something that will actually
take hold. Otherwise you're just circle jerking and feeling like the
world is on your side.

I don't think that you reach resolution through consensus. When has
that ever worked? You reach resolution when you have adoption. There
was this guy, Charles, and he had this theory about how competition
helped the most able species survive. You should look him up. He spent
a lot of time in the Galapagos. :P

I've seen very little transparency in decision making on matters of
import, i.e. the technologies on the homepage, which represent a
mutual endorsement (really, we don't need the extra traffic
thankyouverymuch -- nor did we ask for it). You've been transparent
about picking a logo (that hasn't gone so well) and about whether
Tumblr should be the official blog or not, and frankly, the decision
making process in both of those cases seems fraught with both politics
and a lack of clear ownership of the problem. I'll give you a pass
with those particular instances since this is still a young group with
a desire both to let everyone in while also trying to have some sense
of order, but the trajectory so far does not bode well, given my
previous experiences with constructive leadership.

The last point is somewhat redundant, though it's basically a self-
imposed mandate not to invent any new technologies. This is a good
one, but really the one that is required in order for you to maintain
any chance of credibility when so many other groups have sought, or
are working, to solve this problem. If you were to invent something
new, like the WRFS, the purpose of the group would clearly need to
change -- not because WRFS is a bad idea -- but because it's untested,
there are no implementations in the wild, and it's starting with a
new, bold vision. WRFS may catch on, who knows? But it's certainly
something outside the scope of the original point of promoting
existing means for achieving some kind of portable data
infrastructure.

Ok, now about what DP is NOT (and by the way, it is super handy that
you at least have this document and have wrung your hands about what
you are from the beginning -- it gives me something to actually refer
to, ideally, to help you do some introspection):

* We are not a group focused on creating new technologies.
DataPortability intends to work with tools that already exist today.

--> Ok, got that. Still, selection criteria is vague if non-existent.
I've gone through a selection process with DiSo and we landed on
microformats, OpenID, OAuth, ATOM and someday, XMPP.
* Microformats because WordPress already supported XFN and there's
lots of microformats in the wild already not being leveraged, plus
they're compatible with ATOM and XMPP.
* OpenID because we had a plugin for WordPress and because we like the
idea of URL-based identifiers; they offer a rich endpoint on which
services can be hung... And because many people use their blog address
when they leave a comment, so why not turn that blog address into
their OpenID?
* OAuth because it's necessary for using OpenID on the desktop or on
mobile devices, and because it provides a better method for doing
permissioning and authorizing that doesn't require usernames and
passwords.
* ATOM because it's better spec'd than RSS, has wider adoption (read:
Google) and because it can be used for push, etc.
* XMPP because it scales well, handles addressable, secure messaging
and federated buddy lists, and because it's already in wide use
(Android, Google Talk).

I'd love to see a similar set of rationales for the DP technology
stack.

* The group is primarily focused on consumer facing technologies and
not those aimed at corporate internal use.

--> This seems patently false, or at least misleading. If the results
of your work are going to end up in consumer facing technologies, ok,
that's fine, but that isn't how this reads. And I appreciate that
you're not talking about intranets, but isn't that self-evident by the
fact that you're talking about "data portability" -- moving data *out*
of silos? Anyway, I'm not sure I get the distinction, but the problem
with this is that you have a bunch of geeky technologies on your
homepage, and yet claim to have an audience of developers, users and
business folks, and yet the result of your work is, what?, data
portability-support consumer technologies? Like iPods or mobile
devices? I guess you could rephrase this to say: we're focusing on
data owned by individuals, rather than proprietary or internal company
data... or something like that. I dunno.

* We are not an organization that mandates single solutions. We
recognize that there are multiple solutions and standards that can be
used to create data portability.

--> Well, this seems like you're going to end up confusing people.
Should I use RDF or microformats? Both? What are the tradeoffs? Well,
usually it's not that simple. It's not like, should I buy 87 or 89 at
the pump, where, with either choice, your car will still run. If you
don't make strong decisions on which technologies to choose, you're
hurting the cause of data portability, since ultimately, while
there're many ways to skin an API, the primary need is for interop. So
if you're not planning on building the interop libraries between
different technologies that do the same thing, how will you ever
achieve true portability if everyone is doing their own thing (see
MySpace or Bebo's implementations of OpenSocial).

Furthermore, I wonder what you would have proposed instead of OAuth,
which was NEW technology, albeit based on prior art? Would you have
just suggested to implement support for BBAuth, OpenAuth, AuthSub and
all the other delegated authZ APIs? Really? If so, you have no idea
what you're talking about and have no clothes. If not, you just broke
your rule not to create anything new. Which will it be?

* We are not going to push approaches that force data into the public
that shouldn't be. The owner of the data should control what parts are
made publicly available, to whom, and how they are used.

But you failed when you invited Scoble to the group and cheered his
scuffle with Facebook. You should have vilified him. Instead, he
became your poster child. This is exactly the kind of fishtailing
thinking that I worry is going to lead to some major fuckup down the
road that imperils all the work we've been doing.

* A legal entity providing legal-level precision.

I guess the legal structure is going to be created to accept funds
(for what?) and to own IP (the brand -- perfect, a target that's
easier to sue!) and that will be accountable to... whom? Every person
on the internets?

I bring up this last point not because I think you should be providing
legal guidance (we have the EFF for that -- by the way, how's your
relationship with them) but because it's stuff like that that destroys
your credibility, at least in the open source, tech scene. We don't
need more foundations or more legal entities just to have a
conversation. If you think you do, you've already lost.

Look, I was a volunteer on the Spread Firefox project. I never got
paid. Thousands of other people like me around the world also pitched
in, organized, didn't get paid, etc. There was a legal structure (the
Mozilla Foundation) and it held the copyright for the Mozilla source
code as well as, eventually, the Firefox, Thunderbird et al
trademarks. It needed to protect them because people might have a
commercial interest in releasing versions of Firefox that were really
malware, and in which case, Mozilla would need a legal instrument to
shut them down. In the case of DataPortability, you'd be better off
pushing data portability, the generic term, than trying to build a
defensible, trademarked brand, IMNSHO. Microformats is spelled with a
lowercase "m" because Tantek intended it to become a common word, not
able to be trademarked, because it was more important that the idea
spread, than any single group hold control over it. Same, more or
less, with BarCamp, and with coworking. Now, I'll submit that radical
ideas like giving up control or ownership of things can be scary, but
frankly, you can't afford not to, if you really want the idea to
spread and to take on a life of its own.

But so far, I see all these trends with the DP group to centralize
centralize centralize! And yet that's the wrong model for the web! And
it's the wrong model for a group that espouses choice and
portability!

Efforts that seem to have worked in the past have been BrowseHappy or
the Web Standards Project. Or Spread Firefox. They had a clear focus
-- to basically do one thing -- and they just beat the drum over and
over again, in any context that was relevant, finding the leverage
points that would give them the most bang for the buck. DP has done
well with its big press releases and has raised its profile with its
logo lawsuits. And yes, the phrase is making its way out there into
conversations, as I said in my post, but the future is less certain to
me. Big SIlos will continue to try to interoperate and best each other
with their openness. I don't know how much DP will be able to
influence what they actually do or how they do it -- again, as I said
-- it was inevitable that they started solving these problems, since
their customers are starting to feel the pain -- and they need better
solutions. It's also a lot more lucrative to monetize the entire web
than just your corner of the web, and when you think about it, what
are the most (ugh) "sticky" websites? Ones that are social! And if
people are spending time NOT on your website, but other peoples'
websites, well, you can make it easy for them to make their sites more
social and more sticky, and then also show ads on those pages, etc.
And then there's just the technological opportunity of adding a social
layer to the web, and well, that needs to happen regardless.

My point in all this is to try to tease out some clarity, which, after
months of debate and discussion, still seems lacking from the core.
Yes, I get it that data portability is about moving/syncing/copying/
streaming data around the web. Ok, fine. And I get that there are
technologies that help you accomplish that, cool. I also get that
raising the visibility of the story of the need for both more data
portability and for more business models that are compatible with data
portability is a worthy thing to pursue. What I don't get is how, with
all this structure, and with a logo, and with technical best
practices, and with a monthly message you're doing anything but
amplifying what's already being done, and what's already going on, or
that will happen, with or without you.

If you want my advice, and I started to provide this with my proposal
for the video project, the central group needs to focus on providing
simple tools and effective methods for individuals who are interested,
to pick up the banner of data portability, and to articulate an
expression of what is broken about the web today, and how they want it
to be fixed. Rather than bombastic press releases, DP should be the
model citizen for how to listen to a wide and diverse constituency,
and then turn that into recommendations or *practices* (only time will
tell if they're best!) that people could adopt to meet the needs of
these audiences.

If you wanted to do something super useful, I think that the small
central group of you that are so passionate about this topic and that
have invested so much of your time already should go out onto the web
and find the specific instances where things are breaking down for
people, where my mom, for example, has to signup for Service X account
even though she has a Service Y account, just to see some photos that
I've shared with her. And then round up the host of problems that
follow when people who just want to connect with people whom they care
about are stymied by the way in which technologies works, or in many
cases, doesn't work, today. Start to array those into "problem:
solution" sets, where you clearly articulate the opportunity that
you're presenting to businesses, should they adopt the practice that
you're proposing. I think this is simple, this is elegant, this is
much needed, and it also focuses you on the real world, and gives
anyone out there on the web the opportunity to contribute to helping
ameliorate the problems that plague us because our technologies are
not yet really working for us, in the ways that we desire, and the
ways that we know are possible.

Apologies for droning on, but I felt I should take this opportunity to
expand on my original post.

Chris

On May 13, 12:10 am, Aaron Cheung <a...@ydrive.com> wrote: