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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. "

20 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 VoidWraith · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    2. 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.").

    3. 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.

  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
  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.

  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. 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.

  7. 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.
    "

  8. 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
  9. 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

  10. 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
  11. 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.

  12. 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)
  13. 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
  14. 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?
  15. 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
  16. 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