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Dave Winer

Dave Winer (b. May 2, 1955) is a software developer who has contributed to APIs related to web publishing, particularly XML-RPC. He is also the author of the early weblog Scripting News, established in 1997^[1], and has been the major evangelist of RSS as "Really Simple Syndication."

Early life

Winer was born in Brooklyn, New York City, and attended the Bronx High School of Science and Tulane University, where he earned a degree in mathematics. In 1979, after graduating with an MS in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, Dave Winer became an employee of Personal Software. In 1981 he left to found Living Videotext, which created early outliner software ThinkTank, Ready and MORE.

Years at UserLand

In 1987 Winer sold Living Videotext to Symantec and used the profits to purchase a large home in Woodside, California (next to Joan Baez) and founded UserLand Software.

In 1994 he began publishing his personal column DaveNet, and in April 1997 founded the weblog Scripting News, although the word "weblog" was not coined at that time. The focus on blogging influenced the development of Userland online publishing products, with Winer enthusiastically promoting and experimenting with new features on his blog and website. During this period, Winer also developed the protocol XML-RPC, which led to the creation of SOAP (co-authored by Winer, Microsoft, and Don Box).

In June 2002 Winer had coronary artery bypass surgery to prevent a heart attack. Afterwards, he quit smoking and left his job as CEO of UserLand, although he maintained ownership of the firm and control of Weblogs.com, kept blogging, and kept promoting his flavor of RSS.

Berkman Fellow at Harvard

Winer spent more than a year as a resident fellow at the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society where he worked on using weblogs in education. While there, he launched the Harvard Weblogs community using UserLand software, and held the first BloggerCon conferences. Winer's fellowship ended in June 2004.

References

^ Paul Festa (February 25, 2003). "Newsmaker: Blogging comes to Harvard". CNET. Retrieved 2007-01-25.

External links

Scripting News, Dave Winer's weblog
His CV and BIO
Eye on Winer A weblog devoted to criticism of Dave Winer

News coverage and interviews

NerdTV Interview (video, audio, and transcript available) - 30 September 2005
Almost famous, a Wired Magazine profile
EWeek story: VeriSign acquires Dave Winer's Weblogs.com
Slashdot Discussion On Weblogs.com Controversy Slashdot follow-up, three days later
Rocketboom Interview

Companies and technologies of relevant interest

UserLand
Frontier kernel
Harvard Law School Blogs
Dave Net
Outliners
XML-RPC
Directory For Soap Developers
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language)

[1] Paul Festa (February 25, 2003). "Newsmaker: Blogging comes to Harvard". CNET. Retrieved 2007-01-25.

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@@ Line 22: / Line 22: @@
 Winer spent more than a year as a resident fellow at the [[Harvard Law School]]'s [[Berkman Center for Internet & Society]] where he worked on using weblogs in education. While there, he launched the [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ Harvard Weblogs] community using UserLand software, and held the first [[BloggerCon]] conferences. Winer's fellowship ended in June 2004.
-==Relationship to the public==
-Winer is known as one of the more polarizing figures in the blogging community. [[Tim Bray]], a co-inventor of [[XML]], wrote on his blog "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."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/06/23/SamsPie|title=I Like Pie|accessdate=2007-01-26|date=2003-06-23|work=ongoing|first=Tim|last=Bray|authorlink=Tim Bray}}</ref> [[Tim O'Reilly]], who has had a rocky relationship with Dave for many years with regards to the technology conferences Tim organizes, says that Dave "can be a great contributor, but he can also decide, for no apparent reason, that someone is somehow on 'the other side,' at which point he becomes disruptive and abusive." <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2000/winer_0900.html|title=Excluding Winer|work=Ask Tim|accessdate=2007-01-26|first=Tim|last=O'Reilly|authorlink=Tim O'Reilly|date=2000-09}}</ref>
-Others speak of Winer with admiration and affection. "Dave is one of my favorite sources of information and opinion on the Web. His opinions are passionately held, well-informed, intelligent, argumentative, and quite often wrong," quipped [[Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy]] author [[Douglas Adams]]. <ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/winer.html|title=Almost Famous|last=Cone|first=Edward|accessdate=2007-01-26|date=2001-05|work=Wired}}</ref> ''[[Cluetrain Manifesto]]'' co-author [[Doc Searls]], a long-time friend of Dave Winer, expressed the sense of indebtedness shared by many of Winer's admirers: "When they scroll the credits of my life, Dave's is going to be one of the first names on the list. And when they scroll the credits for [[weblog|blogging]], [[outliner|outlining]], writing, [[Scripting language|scripting]], journalism, [[XML]], [[RSS (file format)|RSS]], [[SOAP]], [[podcasting]] and a pile of other technologies, standards and practices we will all eventually take for granted, the same will be true for those as well." <ref>{{cite web|url=http://doc.weblogs.com/2005/10/07#aPostOfThanks|last=Searls|first=Doc|work=The Doc Searls Weblog|date=2005-10-07|accessdate=2007-01-26|title=A post of thanks...|authorlink=Doc Searls}}</ref>
 ==See also==