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Microsoft To Extend RSS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yay-another-microsoft-standard dept.

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."

13 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Bye, bye RSS .... by Luscious868 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Repeat after me "embrace and extend" ....

    1. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by Baricom · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm honestly curious about this because this type of action by MS is fuzzy in my head. Is it really that bad? What should they do?

      A promise to not patent whatever it is they're doing would be an excellent start.

    2. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by jpickett · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And if you read how Microsoft is handling their extentions, frankly I don't see what the issue is. So someone thought of a way to make RSS potentially better, and they're sharing it with other people.

      As I see it MS had two options:

      1) Create their own proprietary standard and have everyone bitch at them or;
      2) Use an existing standard, try and OPENLY build on it to do what they want, and only have retards like Slashdot minions bitch about it.

      Sure it's flamebait but I'm sick of this crap. Also wilsone8, I'm not directing this to you, just all the others that don't care to educate themselves first.

  2. How? by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So how exactly will they be changing the standard to make it incompatable with non-Microsoft readers?

    --

    Technoli
    1. Re:How? by Decaff · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Special features to interact with Exchange and/or Outlook.

      That won't break the use of RSS with existing software. RSS is a dialect of XML. XML is designed to be extended without breaking existing uses. This is why XML can be so useful as a data format - software that uses an XML dialect will still work after the dialect is extended.

      I'm not defending Microsoft here, but worries about incompatibilities are almost certainly unfounded because of the way XML works.

  3. As it should be. by TheBrownShow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

  4. What will they really do? by ravenspear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Microsoft "Breaks" RSS by gbulmash · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Whenever Microsoft "extends" a standard, they always seem to extend it in ways so use of their extensions makes your page/script/applet inoperable with competing products that support the internationally approved standard. So should the title of this article actually be "Microsoft Breaks RSS"?

    - Greg

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
    1. Re:Microsoft "Breaks" RSS by Utopia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The RSS standard itself allows for extensions.
      The extensions themselves can be standardized.

      Microsoft is not breaking the standard.




  6. Seen this before by Bronz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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 /.

  7. Embrace, Extend, Patent by Albanach · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Is't microsoft as usual...
    1. Embrace
    2. Extend
    3. Patent
    4. Profit

    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.

  8. RSS Viruses by lullabud · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That get updates every hour on new ways to exploit your system.

  9. Just like Krb5 by jlrobins_uncc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?