Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Extend RSS
Joshua53077 writes "Microsoft announced today a plan to 'extend the RSS standard to better support the publishing of ordered lists of information...' This feature will be included in Longhorn. It appears as though they will be including RSS support in Internet Explorer, which will come over a year and a half after the same technology was introduced in Apple's Safari RSS." From the article: "Gary Schare, director of strategic product management in the Windows division of Microsoft, says that while RSS is a reliable standard for updating information in message form, it currently has no logical way to organize that information in a way that could help subscribers keep track of what is being fed to them."
Repeat after me "embrace and extend" ....
So how exactly will they be changing the standard to make it incompatable with non-Microsoft readers?
Technoli
...while RSS is a reliable standard for updating information in message form, it currently has no logical way to organize that information in a way that could help subscribers keep track of what is being fed to them.
Which is exactly the way it SHOULD be done. Keep the management of the data seperate from the transmission of the data. Leave content management up to the APPLICATION.
I hope by "extend the standard" they don't mean "basterdize it and then break compatibility with all non-M$ versions" because we've all seen that before.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Is there really a concern that they'll embrace and extend when they take so long to embrace? Apple on Intel will likely be out before Microsoft releases the successor to XP, which was released in 2001.
So MSFT has basically taken the better, cooler features out of Longhorn and replaced it with an RSS reader? I haven't been paying too much attention to Longhorn but really, what new things are going to be in there?
How long can this be maintained?
As long as we let them.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
1. Pick an up and coming technology that _you_ didn't see coming (and that your products don't support at all).
/.
2. Point out a fault in it. Promise to *fix* it by changing the standard so the improved version is only compatible with your software.
3. Get people to believe the technology isn't ready until you have a chance to support it.
4. Sell it as a new idea and profit.
Look, I made an ordered list without extending
Funny, every RSS feed *I* have ever subscribed to has always been returned in timestamp order, newest article first.
How *else* would you organize it? I watch my feeds based on timestamp - if something new shows up, it shows up at the top of the list.
It ain't rocket science ...
my geeklog
Their Office 2k3 XML format's 'may' have patents prohibiting their use in open source applications. Who's to bet the new RSS 'standard' will similarly be patented.
Yeah, but isn't that really all RSS is? Another format of the RDF that was used for channels?
This sig intentionally left justified.
Now, I'm no MS apologist (look back at my comments) but this is actually good news because Microsoft has decided to release the specs under a Creative Commons "Attribution, Share-Alike" liscense: one of the more generous liscensing plans released by the Creative Commons.
Larry Lesig has more at his blog.
I can't vouch for Microsoft's reasons for doing this, other than speculate that they are trying to respond to the old criticism that "embrace and extend" really means "steal and lock away". If Microsoft really is trying to be more open in it's communiction protocols, I can't help but see that as a good thing. They are free to extend all they want as long as they do not use their dominant market position to force those extensions on their customers to unfairly place burdens on their competitors.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
That get updates every hour on new ways to exploit your system.
Which they released a 'legal', but value-added-only-for-microsoft extension, whose documentation was explicitly licensed as to prevent you from making an open-source interoperable equivalent.
AFAIR, anyway. Does SambaNG or whatever truly smell like an AD with the MS-KRB5 authorization field properly filled-in?
Amen. I use a Mac but frankly the little sneaky comments embarass me. It like Six degrees of Mac with /. comments
Riiiiiight... because Microsoft's history is replete with instances of giving us exactly what was promised when the shipping date arrived.
No, what's a very common marketing move for Microsoft is to take existing features and innovation from other companies, rehash them into slightly or not-so-slightly incompatible formats, and then bolt them into the operating system monopoly to make sure that "everyone" has the "enhanced" version that doesn't work right for the standard itself.
The reason Microsoft has to strip features out of Longhorn but is more than willing to put enhanced RSS into Longhorn is because all those features that Microsoft is pulling haven't been invented by someone else yet for Microsoft to copy, but RSS is right there for the taking and breaking.
Parent is overrated.
This is not a "common" marketing move because it makes no sense. You cannot "lull" your competitors into slowing down -- your competitors do not react to your announcements, they react to what they perceive the market wants and what they think you are doing, not what you say you are doing. Neither does it help to suddenly pop something onto the market when you have been telling IT managers for months to prepare for a release in 2006/2007. MS makes its living by allowing IT shops to phase and plan for purchases and upgrades. Do you think anyone is going to buy Longhorn in "December," if MS magically released it, when they were planning to upgrade their infrastructure and develop and test for Longhorn in 2007? You can bet that they'll wait until 2007 to purchase Longhorn even if it were released early.
So, if this scheme were so "common," how about some examples?