Sidebar: RSS: The Non-Standard

Computerworld - "RSS" is an umbrella term that includes at least seven versions of at least two different but parallel formats, all separated by political problems. The original RSS (RDF Site Summary), Version 0.90, was designed by Netscape using the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) Resource Description Format specification as a format for building portals of headlines from news sites.
Netscape soon decided that this was too complex and proposed a simpler version, dubbed RSS 0.91 (the initials now standing for Rich Site Summary). Shortly thereafter, Netscape lost interest in portal-making and dropped the project.
An independent developer of weblogging products, UserLand Software, adopted 0.91 as the basis for its products, and RSS (now an acronym for Really Simple Syndication) became quite popular in and beyond the blogging community.
In 2000, a new group wanted to expand the RSS format to include more data, going back to the original principles and RDF syntax of RSS 0.90, using XML namespaces and focusing on modularity and extensibility. This RSS-DEV group published a proposed RSS 1.0 specification draft. And then the arguments started.
UserLand's founder, David Winer, wasn't involved in designing this new format and disagreed strongly with the direction it chose; he favored even further simplification. Winer suggested that the RSS-DEV group pick a different name for its work to resolve the conflict, but the group chose to stick with RSS 1.0. After that, UserLand continued to develop the original branch through Versions 0.92, 0.93 and 0.94. In 2002, Winer proposed RSS 2.0. The RDF group then proposed a 3.0 specification.
So RSS 1.0 isn't a later version of 0.91, 0.92, 0.93 or 0.94, nor is RSS 2.0 a later development of RSS 1.0 -- though all are descendants of Netscape's original Version 0.90. It's a confusing mess.
In 2003, in an attempt to get beyond the arguments - as well as to provide an extensible standard that would be vendor-neutral, clearly and thoroughly specified, and better suited to blogging and archiving -- an IETF working group was formed to create a new weblog and syndication format, called Atom (previously known as Echo). The first working draft of Atom is due to be published in September, with an interoperability event scheduled for November.

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