From Evan Williams, via the Blogger Developer Network: We will not be implementing or supporting the Blogger API 2.0… Well, thanks for telling us now. We are moving away from XML-RPC… and toward SOAP. Doh! Just when I finally had my half-baked XML-RPC stuff working really well! Dang. Interoperability… Well, OK. I must admit that this would be nice. But I don’t see why it can’t be done with XML-RPC. Why force all of us who make blogging clients learn, test, and implement a new protocol?
Brent Simmons agrees. And I’m with Brent. I may not like it, but there are pragmatic reasons to support it: customers. They’ve paid for a tool and they expect it to work. It’s my job to make it work.
Jake Savin of Userland chimes in as well: Will it be worth it? Will what we have at the end of this process be better than what we already have? I don’t have a crystal ball, but my fear is that we developers will have a large amount of work to do if we want to support this decision, and that the benefit to our users will be negligable. Well said, Jake.
Here’s another link to Ben Trott’s article on Why We Need Echo.
It’s a scary world when Dave Winer sounds like the voice of reason.