Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

RSS Wins, Signals Atom's Death Toll?

Posted by Hemos on from the well-maybe dept.

S. Housley writes " RSS appears to have conquered the last hurdle in becoming the industry syndication standard. Microsoft's inclusion of RSS into the newest version of Internet Explorer and reports that RSS will be in Longhorn's coming release appears to be the final nail in the coffin of the Atom specification. Even Atom's steadfast supporter Google, appears to have seen the light. Google had previously acquired Blogger, a popular blogging tool that uses the Atom specification to syndicate the contents of blogs created on the Blogger platform. In the past Google had strategically steered clear of endorsing the RSS specification hoping that Atom, would take hold. Google's recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification. "

66 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Atom's Death Toll by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow, how many people did Atom kill? I always liked RSS better anyway. Now that I know not only that RSS isn't a killer, but has also been monitoring Atom's killing, and indeed even signaling its death toll to the authorities, I'm even more in support of it.

    Now if only RSS could sound Atom's death knell...

    (In case the editors have seen fit to correct it, the original title was "Developers: RSS' Win, Signals Atom's Death Toll".)

    1. Re:Atom's Death Toll by minus_273 · · Score: 4, Funny

      are you sure it wasn't a Death Troll?
      "RSS' Win, Signals Atom's Death Toll" could really be an article about Orcs on the rampage after receiving the fiery signal of RSS' victory on the glorious battlefield.

      --
      The war with islam is a war on the beast
      The war on terror is a war for peace
    2. Re:Atom's Death Toll by VoidWraith · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not only that, but the comma has no place there...

    3. Re:Atom's Death Toll by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, you're actually wrong.

      We're not talking about individual words here, for one, we're talking about phrases.

      "Death toll" is the total number of people who die as a result of a disaster or other adverse event.

      "Death knell" is a bell rung to announce death, or an omen of death or destruction.

      So to say "death toll" in this context is completely and utterly wrong, and the fact that "toll", on its own, also can mean to ring a bell is actually completely unrelated and incidental.

      But even if we do, for a moment, accept your assertion that "death toll" is an acceptable use here, the use of "signals" in conjunction with it as also meaningless.

      Let's face it: the author meant to say "sounds the death knell" or "rings the death knell" or something to that effect, and just got it horribly, horribly wrong in his mind, likely using the same logic you did ("Hmm, I've heard about a bell tolling before, so "death toll" must be what I'm looking for.").

    4. Re:Atom's Death Toll by ch-chuck · · Score: 3, Funny

      Guess you could say that Atom bombed - which would explain the death toll.

      --
      try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
    5. Re:Atom's Death Toll by squidfood · · Score: 5, Insightful
      To sum up:

      When a bell tolls a death knell
      Each knell's for one body
      The death toll is the sum of knells
      But only one's for thee.

    6. Re:Atom's Death Toll by Bob+Hearn · · Score: 2

      Actually there are no less than five comma errors in that one summary. That's quite an accomplishment, but it's extremely painful to read!

    7. Re:Atom's Death Toll by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The phrase death toll has a single, well-defined meaning. It does not mean the same as death knell, no matter that the individual word toll, in the context of bells, means the same as knell, in the same context.

      For what it's worth (ie nothing), I've never heard the phrase "funeral toll" :)

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
    8. Re:Atom's Death Toll by tehshen · · Score: 3, Funny

      If you post a grammar rant then you automatically include one mistake (it's like a law, or something).

      "no fewer than"

      --
      Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
    9. Re:Atom's Death Toll by wdr1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is an ad, intended to drive site traffic. Not to say Hemos understood it to be as such, but it definitely is. (If you look at the "About us" on the feed page, you'll see that they also own "NotePage", the the site listed as the submitter's homepage.)

      It's not so bad that this story was approved as an ad, but rather it's so poorly written and poorly understood by the author. After announcing support for RSS, MS's Longhorn team bent over backwards to explain that they were supporting Atom too. The rest of it really is a long winded way to say that part of Google started using RSS in addition to Atom (not instead of!). In fact, I've no idea what point he's even making with Blogger, as they continue to use Atom!

      Give the utter crap of this post, the only thing that surprised me was that it was posted by timothy!

      -Bill

      --
      SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
    10. Re:Atom's Death Toll by HeroreV · · Score: 2, Informative

      Even more obvious is that RSS' should be RSS's instead.

  2. Article from a biased company by bigwavejas · · Score: 5, Insightful
    RSS may have won the Atom/RSS battle, but for Feedforall.com to make such matter-of-fact statements such as,

    "Google's recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification."

    ...When they're a company that exclusively promotes the use of RSS, it seems a bit self-righteous; moreover, presumptuous that Google is simply writing off Atom.

    --
    "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
    1. Re:Article from a biased company by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And didn't Atom recently become an official IETF standard? It seems a lot more of a win than being embedded in beta versions of Vista - it seems unlikely that Vista will ship without support for all three, if it does then that will give Apple something else to crow about since Safari supports RSS, Atom and RSS.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Article from a biased company by GreenHell · · Score: 2, Informative

      Even better: when they're a company that exclusively promotes the use of RSS and they don't even have a valid RSS feed, it seems like a good reason to laugh at them.

      --
      "I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
    3. Re:Article from a biased company by His+name+cannot+be+s · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "When they're a company that exclusively promotes the use of RSS, it seems a bit self-righteous; moreover, presumptuous that Google is simply writing off Atom."

      No kidding, given the rest of the facts:

      Microsoft already stated that they would be using xml namespaces to add to RSS. Which is exactly what Dave Winer who published RSS 2.0 intended. Microsoft actually consulted Dave before getting very far too. Quote: "Anyway, there's a lot more to what they're doing, but I wanted to say in advance that I think what they're doing is cool. "

      Additionally, Microsoft has stated support for Atom as well.

      Heh.

      --
      "...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
    4. Re:Article from a biased company by hritcu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You guys sound like Vista is going to ship sometime soon. I wonder if they will make it in 2006? 2007? Or MS fains will have to wait till 2008 to be able to run the newest and coolest windows. With MS-RSS support, of course.

      --
      If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
    5. Re:Article from a biased company by jevvim · · Score: 2, Informative

      And to top it off, the submitter's name links to NotePage, which operates the FeedForAll site as well. And yet, no "conflict of interest" warning from the submitter.

    6. Re:Article from a biased company by keytoe · · Score: 3, Funny
      it seems unlikely that Vista will ship without support for all three, if it does then that will give Apple something else to crow about since Safari supports RSS, Atom and RSS
      Internet Explorer 7 - Supports six syndication formats: RSS, Atom, Atom, RSS, Atom and RSS. That's twice as many as Safari!
      --

      Culture is more than commerce

    7. Re:Article from a biased company by mccoma · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The sad part is it is probably correct to repeat RSS multiple times.

    8. Re:Article from a biased company by mikefe · · Score: 2, Informative
      Yep, it's true since the version numbers were not handled in a sane way at all.

      From Wikipedia:

      • RSS 0.90 was the original Netscape RSS version. This RSS was called RDF Site Summary, but was based on an early working draft of the RDF standard, and was not compatible with the final RDF Recommendation.
      • RSS 1.0 and 1.1 are an open format by the "RSS-DEV Working Group", again standing for RDF Site Summary. RSS 1.0 is an RDF format like RSS 0.90, but not fully compatible with it, since 1.0 is based on the final RDF 1.0 Recommendation.

      The RSS 2.* branch (initially UserLand, now Harvard) includes the following versions:


      • RSS 0.91 is the simplified RSS version released by Netscape, and also the version number of the simplified version championed by Dave Winer from Userland Software. The Netscape version was now called Rich Site Summary, this was no longer an RDF format, but was relatively easy to use. It remains the most common RSS variant.
      • RSS 0.92 through 0.94 are expansions of the RSS 0.91 format, which are mostly compatible with each other and with Winer's version of RSS 0.91, but are not compatible with RSS 0.90. In all Userland RSS 0.9x specifications, RSS was no longer an acronym.
      • RSS 2.0.1 has the internal version number 2.0. RSS 2.0.1 was proclaimed to be "frozen", but still updated shortly after release without changing the version number. RSS now stood for Really Simple Syndication. The major change in this version is an explicit extension mechanism using XML Namespaces.
      --
      There: Something at a specific location.
      Their: Owned by someone.
      Please make sure your english compiles.
  3. MSRSS by Langley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wan't Microsoft making noise a little while ago about adding some extensions to RSS. Isn't this the only reason they are including RSS in IE, not because of some heartwarming realization that no company is an island?

  4. Don't you mean embraced&extended RSS by team99parody · · Score: 5, Informative

    I thought Microsoft endorsed their embraced and extended and renamed RSS. Seems like it's now not Atom vs RSS, but "Web Feeds" vs RSS.

    1. Re:Don't you mean embraced&extended RSS by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I thought Microsoft endorsed their embraced and extended and renamed RSS. Seems like it's now not Atom vs RSS, but "Web Feeds" vs RSS.

      Err...

      This just seem to be a rebranding like Firefox and "Live Bookmarks".

      Numerous hints at it in the article too:

      Because of this, its renaming of RSS is not a sign the company is trying to remake the technology for its own purposes but rather a way to make a distinction between RSS and a feature of IE.

      Microsoft is adding RSS functionality to the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, primarily through the IE 7 version of its Web browser.

      Of course, there's an RSS zealot saying this too:

      "Like it or not Microsoft, the technology is called RSS. If you try to change that, for whatever reason, you will get routed around," wrote Winer, a software guru who is credited with pioneering RSS and other Web standards.

      Did he complain as loudly when competing web browsers introduced RSS support under other names? Or is it a Microsoft thing... again? I must ask myself if he visits HTML pages or websites as well.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    2. Re:Don't you mean embraced&extended RSS by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Microsoft is not the only one to embrace and extend. Apple seems to have done the same thing with the Podcast file spec (which is RSS based):

      How To Publish a Podcast on the iTunes Music Store

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    3. Re:Don't you mean embraced&extended RSS by michaeldot · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's a bit different there. It is still the identical RSS 2.0 spec. They are just using a namespace to supply information that isn't otherwise available, such as duration, a subtitle and an "explicit" warning, which are handy (but optional) things to have.

      Conventional RSS tags in Podcasts without these namespace tags work fine, just don't give the extra useful information.

      The namespace allows delineation of info voluntarily added for the user's benefit. It hasn't altered the RSS 2.0 spec at all.

  5. Does netcraft confirm it? by TheAvatar666 · · Score: 5, Funny

    We all know for a fact that if Netcraft doesn't confirm it, it is not dead, so let me repeat. Does netcraft confirm it?

  6. Which RSS did Microsoft embrace? by hta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    does anyone have real info on which version numbers of RSS (and according to whose spec) works with the Microsoft implementation?

    1. Re:Which RSS did Microsoft embrace? by vcv · · Score: 2, Informative

      All of them. They also are going to support Atom.

  7. FUD, FUD, and more FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com/ software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts.

    Wow. It's a marketing plant trumpeting that RSS is now the standard, made by a company that specialises in RSS feeds.

    1. Re:FUD, FUD, and more FUD by pokka · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So, is anyone from slashdot going to correct this story?

      This was pure spam, published to sway public opinion in the Atom vs RSS debate, and despite the fact that they've been called out in the comments, their plan is going to work unless slashdot removes the story or substantially edits it to point out the fraud. It will appear in countless syndicated news feeds (in RSS or Atom, ha), in blogs referencing the post (by people who didn't read the comments and were therefore fooled). Google searches about Atom will bring up this story, etc.

      I've seen countless fake stories posted to Slashdot, and they get the same (non-)treatment. Slashdot should really do a better job of filtering this stuff out *before* it's published, because - whether they realize it or not - it actually causes a lot of damage to the public's knowledge and understanding of technology. And it *is* partly Slashdot's fault, because it would take no longer than five minutes per story to verify that it is fundamentally valid (and maybe an extra five minutes to spell-check and remove sensationalistic text).

  8. microsoft is going to support ATOM too by kard · · Score: 5, Informative

    from:

    http://blogs.msdn.com/rssteam/

    "
    Beta 1 of Windows Vista and IE 7 for XP currently supports the web feed formats RSS .9x, RSS 1.0, and RSS 2.0. As Sean mentioned, Atom 0.3 and Atom 1.0 support will come in a later release.
    "

  9. What's with the bias? by MagikSlinger · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's hands down the most biased "news" posting I've seen on Slashdot... this month.

    --
    The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
    1. Re:What's with the bias? by LnxAddct · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The submitter is the owner of a company specializing in RSS editing/creation software.
      Regards,
      Steve

  10. Crack monkey by LordMyren · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You crack rock smoking monkey, only like .5% of the web denziens actually use some form of syndication. Most people havent the foggiest idea what RSS even is. So, MS puts RSS into IE: suddenly RSS is going to overrun atom? Somehow I think not.

    IMO, atom is a far better protocol. The creators obviously tried to integrate the protocol with existing XML standards, v. RSS which basically gets as far as tag>. Its far more clear about its payload and is way better suited towards XML delivery. But, decide for yourself.

    I see no problem with the current duality. I do wish Atom were available more places, but I can still live with RSS where I need to.

    Myren

  11. Much ado about nothing by winkydink · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As you point out, only a tiny percentage of users actually use some form of syndication. Doesn't this really boil down to, "who cares?"

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  12. Formats don't die by mveloso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Old formats don't die, they just go into maintenance mode.

    Saying one format or another has won is always premature. The only time it's safe to say that a format is dead is when they have to build new equipment to read it because the hardware is missing. And even then you never know.

    This article is obviously biased. It's like when Netscape said "the desktop is dead" when the Java plugin was first released.

  13. Is that so? by savala · · Score: 5, Informative
    Strange that...
    Windows Vista will support all common RSS formats, including: RSS 1.0, 2.0 and Atom 0.3. We will support Atom 1.0 when it's released.
    source: msdn.microsoft.com
  14. Articles, with extra, commas by blueZ3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    are, frequently posted, on slashdot. They, often amuse, me.

    --
    Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
    1. Re:Articles, with extra, commas by TheSpoom · · Score: 3, Funny

      Mr. Shatner, I didn't know you posted on Slashdot! Can I have your autograph?

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
  15. RSS vs. ATOM by digitalgimpus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've seen people in both camps, but have yet to see a true pro/con list for each. Anyone care to share?

    I've implemented RSS before, never bothered with ATOM, since RSS seems to be better supported client side.

    What are the advantages/disadvantages of each standard?

    1. Re:RSS vs. ATOM by metamatic · · Score: 5, Informative

      RSS has 11 different varieties, 9 if you exclude the two attempts at an "RSS 3". Atom has a single variety.

      RSS 1.0 has a way to include HTML in the feed. RSS 2.0 doesn't. Atom does, and also supports XHTML.

      RSS 1.0 is extensible in a standard way via namespaces. RSS 2.0 is extended via ad-hoc additions. Atom is extensible via namespaces.

      Atom is more complicated than RSS 1.0, which is more complicated than RSS 2.0.

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  16. well... by DarkLox · · Score: 2, Funny

    When GoogleOS comes out, and they buy out Microsoft and Atom will live again

    --
    Momma told me that sigs are for the devil
  17. Who Cares? by WombatControl · · Score: 5, Informative

    To be honest, the RSS vs. Atom thing is a lot like DVD+R and DVD-R - at this point they might as well be interchangeable.

    Just about every feed parser handles both Atom and RSS feeds. Using a tool like Magpie RSS (PHP) or the Universal Feed Parser (Python) the format of any given feed is entirely transparent to application developers. RSS 1.0? RSS 2.0? Atom 0.3? It all gets processed by the parser in a nearly identical way.

    Already tools like Movable Type/Typepad or WordPress generate both RSS and Atom feeds by default. The vast majority of users don't know and don't care which feed format they're reading so long as it works. Both the toolkits and the applications use both formats and there's really little reason why they can't continue to support both.

    There doesn't have to be a single "winner" in the syndication feed wars. Atom and RSS can exist together for some time, and arguing that this is a zero-sum game in which one and only one feed format can exist is ridiculous. As long as the difference is transparent to end users, and relatively transparent to developers, neither format will totally conquer the other.

    1. Re:Who Cares? by metamatic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, developers care, because the RSS specs (all nine different ones) are a mess, whereas Atom is quite carefully specified. RSS has the same problems as "Netscape HTML", whereas Atom is more like XHTML.

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  18. BFD by scovetta · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Atom is an export format, right? So is rss. They're a little different. So someone at the Googleplex needs to write blog2rss.py and they can get rid of blog2atom.py.

    Or does Atom have something to do with the way the data is stored internally? And I think Google did pretty well with Blogger-- it's like saying, "Google chose wrong when they bought Blogger, because Blogger used a different stylesheet on their home page than Google does."

    --
    Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
  19. Isn't this cute ... but it's wrong!!! by hritcu · · Score: 5, Informative

    RSS with its 9+1 incompatible versions is hardly a standard for anything. It is a huge pain for a implementer to decide which versions to support. Microsoft decided to support (one version of) RSS for now because it has been around for longer and we know how reticent is Microsoft to everythig new. So, for Microsot, RSS is of course better then nothing.

    However, it is just wrong to say that the format war is over and RSS has won. Atom is a coherent standard now being finished under the umbrella of the IETF , and it is just now just starting to catch. And it will, because many of us have had enough RSS bullshit. We already had a disscussion with the guy behind RSS 3.0 which convinced me that with guys like him writing the RSS specs (just for the love of writing), RSS is REALLY DOOMED.

    --
    If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
  20. Information on the Author/Submitter. by magicchex · · Score: 5, Informative

    Taken from the bottom of the article:

    About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com/ software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for FeedForDev http://www.feedfordev.com/ an RSS component for developers. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net/ a wireless text messaging software company.

    Needless to say, submitting your own obviously biased, commercially inspired, and untrue article is a tad transparent, but what do I know?

    --
    How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
    1. Re:Information on the Author/Submitter. by AVIDJockey · · Score: 2, Insightful

      She, or others associated with feedforall.com, have a history of posting articles like this one that indirectly shill their services.

  21. RSS man by thermostat42 · · Score: 5, Funny

    RSS man, RSS man,
    RSS man hates Atom man,
    They have a fight, RSS wins.
    RSS man.

    --
    no comment
  22. Captain Obvious by Red+Flayer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Breaking news, RSS is favored by industry giants! Use RSS, support for Atom is disappearing!

    Oh, and by the way, we happen to produce software to manage your RSS needs!

    "Now that Atom's attempt at replacing RSS has fallen flat, the syndication arena will likely see significant innovation and progress."

    Yes, that's what competition does, it stifles innovation.

    Seriously, though, uniform standards can be great, saving dev time for loads of people and companies.

    But I'd say that, at the very least, this promotional material (that's what it is) is putting the cart before the horse, and is also poorly written. I'd like to read a detailed analysis by an industry expert (not a marketing department), who is qualified to project market share for the standards.

    Also: Google's recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification.

    Actually, this appears to be an acknowledgement that (1) Google would like as many consumers as possible to use Google News and (2) Google is choosing not to use their market share to lock out competitors in related products.

    --
    "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  23. Tim Bray: RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 Compared by otisg · · Score: 5, Informative

    RSS indeed dominates the feed scene, but Atom 1.0 has just been reviewed and approved by the Atompub Working Group (part of IETF, the same group that standardized HTTP, SMTP, and many other RFCs).

    Thus, I wouldn't be so quick to claim RSS' victory. Tim Bray is a big supporter of Atom, and here is recent report titled RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 Compared. Over at Simpy (feel free to use demo/demo account if you don't have an account yet), I am happily supporting RSS and Atom (as well as RDF).

    I believe Atom also has the "push" component, and not just "pull" that RSS has. That is, I believe Atom spec contains specification of Atom as a way for making requests to web services, while RSS, I think, only lets you publish the data passively, and have clients actively pull it.
    I can't find good references to this now, but maybe somebody else can find them and reply to this thread.

    --
    Simpy
  24. Big win for RSS by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know Sun thought that Microsoft's adoption of Java was A Big Win, too.

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  25. Microsoft view of "innovation"? by cahiha · · Score: 2, Informative

    Microsoft's inclusion of RSS into the newest version of Internet Explorer and reports that RSS will be in Longhorn's coming release appears to be the final nail in the coffin of the Atom specification. [...] Now that Atom's attempt at replacing RSS has fallen flat, the syndication arena will likely see significant innovation and progress.

    I suppose that's the usual Microsoft view, which means that we can only have innovation once Microsoft has moved and picked a standard that's substantially inferior to the state of the art.

    I mean, the differences between RSS and Atom aren't that big (they are both XML), but within those constraints, RSS still manages to get a bunch of things wrong relative to Atom (see here for a discussion).

  26. Here's why RSS won by atomm1024 · · Score: 3, Informative
    When ever there's a technical niche to be filled, then given a set of possible candidates, costing equally as much (resource- and price-wise) to use, and having approximately equal functionality, the first one to become widely used will probably stay widely used, unless a future competitor has very important technical merits that can not be back-ported to the existing system.

    Actually, everything I said there is basically common sense, but said in a particularly fancy way. RSS wins because it was the first to become widely used, and for the huge majority of uses (millions of random users with their feed-readers), switching to Atom would just break compatibility and offer no technical merits. Why is it any wonder that RSS won?

    And by technical merits, I mean those observable to normal users. If J. Random Blogger can't see how switching to Atom makes things better, then why would he do it? Maybe the underlying architecture of Atom is much better. (I don't know; I haven't actually read an explanation of its improvements, aside from being standardized.) But if the RSS feeds of the present work just fine, which they do, then nobody's going to switch. I mean, if the Internet community made their protocol/format choices solely on technical merit, then not only would JSON-RPC have superseded XML-RPC, but I should also think thatwe'd be using a variant of Aaron Swartz's RSS 3.0 instead of the XML-based formats by now. It would save bandwidth, make it easier for humans to read and write feeds, and make it easier to parse and generate. (Yes, to parse it you'll have to write a a few custom regexes or something, but you won't need to include a 3MB XML-parsing library.) And we wouldn't need to worry about internationalisation issues like encoding, because RSS 3.0 feeds are UTF-8 by definition. Unfortunately, this is not about technical merits, just like capitalistic competition is never entirely about offering higher-quality goods or services. It's all about marketing, really -- marketing just enough for your product to get a foothold.

    Google didn't choose the "wrong" specification. They chose a doomed one, maybe, but that doesn't make it bad.

    --
    Signature.
    1. Re:Here's why RSS won by WombatControl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let's assume RSS "won" something. (Which in itself is baloney - Atom is still very much around and well-supported.)

      Which RSS "won"? RSS 2.0? RSS 1.0? RSS 0.91? Any of the 9 different incompatible versions of RSS?

      There's a reason why non-XML formats like JSON-RPC and RSS3.0 never caught on - it's because they're not based on XML. XML, for all its shortcomings, is supported by damn near everything under the sun. You can query it with XPath, transform it back into XHTML with XSTL, slice it, dice it, and turn it into delicious Julienne fries. XML is the information interchange format right now, and that's why formats that aren't based off of valid XML schemas are pretty much doomed to failure.

      Atom has the backing of the IETF. Every toolkit on the planet supports Atom - as will Vista. RSS won't be going away, but saying one format or another will "win" is assuming that this is a zero-sum game when it really isn't.

      The real battle was between XML formats and non-XML formats, and the non-XML formats like Netscape's old versions of RDF died out a long time ago.

  27. Ask Slashdot: Easy RSS? by kisrael · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have a homebrew-ed backend weblog, http://kisrael.com/

    I know RSS has forked, and I don't use it much myself but I know others have asked for an RSS feed...is there a simple guide to outputting my content in an RSS kind of way?

    Also, if I wanted to mirror my content on an LJ, would it be easier to automate the LJ postings and get an RSS feed off of that, or vice versa, or are they completely indpendent tasks?

    --
    SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
  28. Bias by slapout · · Score: 4, Insightful

    RSS will be in Longhorn

    Yeah, because there's absolutely no possibilty that someone will write a program for Longhorn(Vista) that will support Atom.

    Longhorn's coming release appears to be the final nail in the coffin of the Atom specification

    I guess because Microsoft declares something, that's it. Everyone else should just pack up and go home. (Someone should be sure to tell those Firefox people that Firefox isn't going to be on the Vista install CD!)

    I don't have a dog in this fight, but this story seems to have a bias.

    --
    Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
  29. Poor dying Google... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Funny
    Google had previously acquired Blogger, a popular blogging tool that uses the Atom specification to syndicate the contents of blogs created on the Blogger platform.

    ...and we all know that Google's poor, beleaguered programmers will be incapable of altering the source of the application they own to transmit two. different. formats! of syndication data. That'd be like expecting them to support multiple locales or offer some kind of an aggregated news service. Why, oh why, must we constantly demand the impossible of our heroes?

    Or they could just let an intern hack something up one weekend. Either way.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  30. Atom is more than a feed format by joeykiller · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's worth noting that Atom is more than RSS is, in that it is also a push/publication format. You can use Atom to post to your blog; you can use it to upload pictures and files, delete postings, etc. It's quite possible that the two formats could continue to co-exists peacefully, merely because they fill different functions.

  31. What a troll by Lac · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The submitter seems to think that Google bought Blogger because it uses Atom for feeds. Clue: I bet its market share was more of a selling point. Additional clue: adding rss feeds to blogger is probably (a) easy and (b) completely non-controversial to anyone remotely sane.

  32. Re:Who cares, they both suck. by CRCulver · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Datetime representation

    You've never heard of ISO 8601?

    encoding confusion

    XML is UTF-8 by default unless another encoding is explicitly given in the first line.

    verbosity and wasted bandwith

    HTTP is compressed by default. XML, being so redundant with all of its angle brackets, quotes, and equals signs, compresses very well indeed.

  33. Advertisements to the right, please by Trevor · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm all for ads on Slashdot, but could we keep them in the sub-section known as "Advertisements"?

    Not only is this article factually incorrect, but it smacks of paid placement. If the Slashdot folks didn't get paid for this post, perhaps they should evaluate why they just gave away a bit of their brand value to pump one side of a religious war.

  34. AtomAPI by Trejkaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So... can I post to my weblog using RSS yet? Clearly they must have tackled this problem if they're going up against Atom.

    --
    Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
  35. error filled & biased by atastypie · · Score: 2, Informative

    I posted a response to this "article" earlier today which I am just going to paste here:

    Normally I try to avoid these articles, but Sharon Housley's RSS Won the Syndication Standards Battle is one I can't avoid. She claims that RSS has overtaken Atom because of support (or lack there of) for RSS by Microsoft and Google.

    Sharon began by saying Microsoft had dumped Atom in favour for RSS. Is it just me or did Microsoft not say that they will support Atom almost 3 weeks ago? She says that Google News feeds having both RSS and Atom is a sign of weakness in the format, even though Google-owned Blogger (and Atom supporter) has always provided a link to FeedBurner for those who prefer RSS instead of Atom. Having both RSS and Atom on Google News isn't a sign that RSS is dominating so much as it is Google providing a choice of format to users. By the way, podcasting is not limited to RSS 2.0 as Atom supports Podcasting in a way that is arguably more powerful than RSS's. Microsoft's lists, another RSS innovation, are also easily done with Atom. Don't forget that the IETF approved the propsed Atom standard while RSS has been fragmented many times by different authors.

    With Microsoft calling its support for syndication web feeds, Google refering to them as feeds on Google News and web clips on Google Desktop 2 (as Brad Hill mentions in Google Shuns the RSS Name) it seems likely that other sites will offer syndication through a generic name in more than one format. How all of this can be viewed as RSS winning any kind of standards battle is baffling.

    Dana

  36. Not just Apple and MS but Yahoo too.. by FinalCut · · Score: 2, Informative

    Lets not forget that Yahoo also embraced and extended RSS with Media RSS

    http://search.yahoo.com/mrss

    I guess that's the beauty of an XML you can always just define your own extension - in the RSS case so long as you don't break basic standard compatiability then your extension will work (most likely often ignored, but will still work).

  37. Greenrd's Law by wiredog · · Score: 2, Interesting

    From K5

    "Evey post disparaging someone else's spelling or grammar, or lauding one's own spelling or grammar, will inevitably contain a spelling or grammatical error."

    --

    Best Slashdot Co