Is Echo/Atom Dead?

I hate to say it (especially after putting in so much effort), but is the project codenamed Atom/Echo dead? Let’s look carefully:

1. The Echo wiki is largely dead. A quick look at the wiki’s recent changes shows that work has definitely slowed right down.
2. The Name Voting is an absolute mess. All of the originally cleared candidates have been voted out, the best names (Echo/Atom) have been deemed unviable, and the new names are… well, awful. Kitak, Mota, Syntia? Are we naming concept cars?
3. Oh yeah, and the number of votes for each entry are very much single figures, which doesn’t look good for community adoption.
4. The Atom mailiing list has plunged in usage. From around 30 entries a day at it’s peak to, at best, 5. Ouch.
5. The Formerly Echo blog is pretty dead too. Updates are sparse and short.
6. Very little mention of it in the places we used to see it mentioned at least twice a post.

From this, we can say that work has definitely died down. But, that doesn’t quite paint a fair picture. Important avenues are being explored elsewhere.

The AtomAPI is doing particularly well. Amongst others, a PHP implementation of the API is pretty much done, as well as PERL and Java versions. That’s a big step.

It’s tough to say. The forward motion we once saw has hit a wall. Hopefully, the apathy will clear up soon. We’ve all put in too much effort to let it die.