Steve Kirks: "Kleenex has become interchangeable with tissue and now RSS has done the same with syndicated content. Now, we can move on to the next step: doing something great with the tools available."

I had a similar thought this morning as I checked the new posts on the Atom-Syntax list, and reading the Scripting News archive from one year ago, when the flamefest that launched Atom was still raging. I was reminded of the student strikes we'd do in the late 60s and early 70s. First have an organizing meeting with the steering committee, print up the leaflets, hand them out, march somewhere, sit-in the lobby of the school, maybe get on TV, whatever, and then what? They were great affairs while we were expressing our outrage, but in the end, we had to go back to school, get good grades, get accepted at good colleges, etc etc. We possibly helped end the war sooner, in some way (although the right-wingers said we did the opposite). It certainly was a lot more fun than sitting in a classroom, getting good grades, etc. We used to joke that we didn't do too many strikes in the winter, mostly they were in April and May when the weather was too good to be caught up inside a classroom.

Anyway, seeing the list of formats that Apple supports, RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, I sighed on behalf of Atom and poor not-respected-by-geeks RSS. Reminds me of what my doctor said when I showed up for an annual checkup five pounds heavier than the year before. I shrugged it off, not too bad I said. She said "But you're going in the wrong direction." Sure, people say that it doesn't matter how many formats there are, but it actually does matter, even for users, as I've said repeatedly, every new format is another brick in the wall of Barrier To Entry, and that means less choice, but it also might make it harder for efforts that build on RSS to get started. I'll give you an example.

Yesterday, I got a note about a great BitTorrent-with-RSS application. I saw the URL to the feed, and groaned. It's RDF. Now, all the BT+RSS apps have been built around RSS 2.0 because it has the enclosure element, and we'd never, as far as I know, anticipated that the RSS confusion would creep into this space. I looked at the file to see how they did it, and whoa, it's a 2.0 file, even though on the outside it says it's RDF. Once you combine RSS with other things, which definitely should be happening more, you add another dimension with the two other flavors. Instead of having to do something once, you have to do it three times. And that's more than three times the trouble, which makes it less than one-third as likely to happen. Imagine going to the BitTorrent people with that problem. "Call us back when you make your mind up," they might reasonably say.

Anyway, when it's all said and done, there will be another flavor of RSS, another name on the list, more work to do, not too bad. If my doctor were here she'd say "But you're going in the wrong direction."

8:22:55 PM