Can’t believe this but it seems to be true. The web world has gone mad in the last few days with everyone shouting at each other about RSS and whether it’s ok as a standard, who should be in control of it, what should happen next. As is often the case with “standards”, different people want different interpretations (we need only look at browsers and how they all work differently and randomly to see that in action). The latest fight is between RSS and something called Echo, which is going to be/is/wants to be/will be/whatever a new version (and, as we also know, a new new thing is not necessarily better than the old thing).
Government has only just started to swing its weight into syndication, content feeds and so on – and what government always wants to work on is a stable, mature, well supported set of tools and standards. I was pretty sure RSS was that until all this blew up.
I hope it sorts itself out and dies down real soon. In the meantime, in protest at the noise, Dave Winer has shut his site down. Jon Udell summarises the mumbojumbo war best. John Gotze says that “RSS is a melting pot of innovative thinking“. Pretty soon it could be just a melted pot.
Why do people always need to fight over something? Liberty versus Passport; Java in phones versus Windows Mobile in phones? I can understand those … money and monopoly depend on them. But RSS?
