The Atom Syntax mailing list seems ripe for another skirmish in the Holy War of technology that's being fought in the name of RDF. Disciples of the Way of the Religious Resource Description Framework are raising their voices and denouncing heathen claims to extensibility without RDF. Unbelievers are sounding their retorts that XML is plenty extensible for them without RDF, thank you very much.

No one is taking up arms yet, and thus far, it's not nearly so contentious as the language of the preceding paragraph might imply. But discussions of this kind do tend to strongly resemble religious debates, with the two sides talking past each other, often in part because they use the same terminology to mean somewhat different things.

In the RDF war, "extensibility" is one of the words that plays that role. When the RDF faithful say extensibility, they're talking about "immaculate extensibility", where you can not only add elements to a format, but you can process those elements in certain ways that those who have seen the light value highly, even if you don't fully understand them. When the Gentiles say extensibility, their goals may not be quite so lofty, but they're sufficient for their needs.

So which side is in the True Way? When it comes to theistic religion, I'm a believer that their is one true faith (with room inside it for many different people--not every decision in life is between right and wrong). But in technological religion, I'm in the relativistic camp. For those who need what RDF offers, or who want to do things the way RDF enables doing them, RDF is probably the True Way. For those who don't care about the values RDF offers, avoiding the extra baggage that RDF requires is the true way.

I'm all for keeping RDF in mind while designing Atom, so that it can easily be RDFified by those who wish to (that idea was raised a little while back--I'm not sure whether anyone is pursuing it still), but I'm not among the RDF faithful, and I don't want to have to perform the extra rituals. Making Atom RDF-friendly is probably the closest we can get to satisfying everyone.