IndieWeb principles:
1. Own your data: 👍 JSON Feed is most often used for blogs, where the priority is owning your content and having your own domain name. It encourages improvements in feed readers, which are about aggregating blogs distributed across the web instead of clients built for specific centralized platforms.
2. Use & publish visible data / DRY: ❌ JSON Feed is a separate file, outside of HTML. It “repeats” data that could already be in HTML / Microformats.
From the IndieWeb #meta chat on 2020-07-30, Chris Aldrich pointed out this downside but also balanced with the positive aspects of JSON Feed:
Given the DRY and sidefile violations, there's a case to be made that IndieWeb likely wouldn't have developed it early on. That said, it does help to provide an easy enough bridge between a variety of things, so I wouldn't be opposed to supporting it now.
3. Make what you need: 👍 JSON Feed was developed because so many developers prefer JSON over XML, and older XML-based feeds had limitations that held back the potential for modern feed readers. ❌ An argument could be made that JF2 was also solving similar problems.
4. Use what you make: 👍 Used in Micro.blog, Aperture, Feedbin, Feedly, NetNewsWire, and other feed or podcast services. Very useful for scripting and automation, so more accessible to people who don’t consider themselves developers.
5. Document: 👍 The spec is documented at its own domain name, jsonfeed.org. ❌ Written in a more casual format than some formal specifications like Micropub.
6. Open source: 👍 WordPress plugin for JSON Feed is open source. Micro.blog’s JSON templates are open source. Dozens of code libraries for Ruby, PHP, etc. are open source.
7. UX and design: ❌ Probably not relevant to JSON Feed.
8. Modularity: 👍 JSON Feed is designed to connect blogs together across a diverse set of platforms. There is nothing in it that’s specific to any one platform.
9. Longevity: 👍 While there are drawbacks to separate files like JSON Feed (see #2 DRY), having content in a portability format can also make it easier to migrate to new systems to preserve content. Blog Archive Format is a proposal that combines Microformats and JSON Feed to build web site archives.
10. Plurality: 👍 There are many JSON Feed implementations, written by different people.
11. Have fun: 🎉