There's a small debate going on right now ... what should the acronym RIA actually represent? There are 2 proposals:

• Rich Internet Application
• Rich Interactive Application

Adobe employees, such as Ryan Stewart, push Rich Internet Application, as that's what it was originally for. But Scott Barnes is declaring that it really should mean Interactive.

Scott's (Microsoft) point:

Internet for me isn't the right word, it's semantically incorrect and out of touch with today's actual "RIA" (Rich Interactive Applications) solutions. Typically, hardware vendors are looking at Rich Interactive Applications with new found respect, and monitoring both Microsoft and Adobe movements in this space.

When you couple hardware vendors along side most internal facing solutions, the word Internet starts to have a confusing message/meaning, as well.... Internet isn't really being used?

Ryan (Adobe) counters:

For some reason nothing gets under my skin more than this whole rich interactive application versus rich Internet application fight (and this bugged me before I joined Adobe). I just think it’s kind of dumb and petty. RIA stands for rich internet application. Everyone calls it that, everyone knows what it means (well as much as anyone can define RIAs) and that’s that.

I agree with Ryan (although it doesn't get under my skin as much). I think Scott is missing the target here. "Internet" may not always be the right word given the delivery may be over the "intranet", but Interactive is hardly an improvement. Interactive is so vague (is it a installed application, a smart-client application -- oh don't get me started on how much I hate that term -- is it a web application with cool DHTML, does it use Flash or Silverlight?). Microsoft Money is a Rich Interactive Application, and for that matter, so is Word 2007.

Rich implies to me fancy -- and the 99% of applications that matter to end users are interactive. Those that aren't interactive are not typically rich (even widgets on the desktop of your favorite operating system are interactive to some degree). How many Rich applications are there that you don't interact with in at least some way?

So, my suggestion would be to Scott since he's a bit frustrated by "Internet" is to drop the "I".

Rich Application.

But then, I think that's missing the whole point of the delivery mechanism being the key to why this acronym exists at all.

And if the whole point of this acronym really is to identify the source of the rich application, then it seems like it should stay. Unfortunately, few acronyms that might identify more precisely the network don't roll off the tongue so well. (Rich Network-Delivered Application?)

Of course, Scott is entitled to call it rich interactive application of course, but Rich Internet Application works just as well for a large percentage of applications that are delivered over the Internet, so that should stay as well. I love overloaded acronyms!