Rejoice or cry. Dave Winer, inventor of RSS (disregarding the other inventors) and A-lister's A-lister in the Valley blog world, is gonna give up blogging at Scripting.com. "Soon, probably before the end of 2006, I will put this site in mothballs, in archive mode, and go on to other things."

Dave's stated reasons: Dave wanted the Internet to be cool in several ways, and, well, it's cool now. Whether you want to credit Dave with the Internet's progress, that's your call. (Whether he credits himself — well, duh.)

Dave's real reason:

Ever the gentleman, TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington makes a show of telling Dave he can't quit and trowels on the Web2.0 mysticism — "It's not your blog, Dave, it's our blog." What he really means is, "Sorry, was that your lunch?"

Maybe this is a trumped-up rivalry — maybe I'm not being fair. But hey, even if these guys would claim "we're not competing," how can I not connect the two men worshipped by every start-up just outside San Francisco?

Why I will stop blogging [Scripting]
No Dave, No! [CrunchNotes]