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Re: [FYI] ATOM ./. RSS



On 12 Feb 2004, at 21:19, I wrote:

> <http://www.dudecheckthisout.com/Blog.aspx?blogId=280&nItems=1&startG
> uid=b912b783-3dff-4e61-861b-b626e0d96182>  
> 
> Google spurns RSS for rising blog format - News - ZDNet  
> 
> Google's Blogger service is bypassing Really Simple Syndication in
> favor of an alternative technology, a move that has sparked more
> discord in a bitter dispute over Web log syndication formats.

----*

<http://www.lawtechguru.com/archives/2004/02/13_the_great_rss_vs_atom 
_news_feed_debate.html>  


February 13, 2004

The Great RSS vs. Atom News Feed Debate

CNET News.com reports that "Google's Blogger service is bypassing 
Really Simple Syndication in favor of an alternative technology, a 
move that has sparked more discord in a bitter dispute over Web log 
syndication formats." Instead of the RSS feed capability previously 
offered in Blogger Pro, Blogger is now exclusively supporting Atom 
for blog content syndication. Goodbye RSS for new Blogger users. 
While there are similarities between RSS and Atom, the developer 
community is getting pretty heated up about the debate between these 
two specifications.

Last year, CNET's special report on "Battle of the Blogs" provided a 
good explanation of the underlying debate. Basically, Dave Winer, who 
is credited with much of the development behind RSS 2.0, had frozen 
its core development "to keep the developers from screwing with it," 
so that it was kept "simple". This didn't sit well with others, so 
they decided to come up with their own flavor of blog content 
syndication, which along the way has been named Pie, Echo, and now 
Atom.

The problem is that while RSS and Atom are more alike than not, they 
are competing specs that could splinter the market. A number of 
bloggers have posted that RSS was really for web site content 
syndication, while Atom is geared toward blog syndication. There are 
many news aggregator programs and web site services that work with 
RSS, but very few will read Atom at the moment. Upon doing a quick 
Google search, I discovered that BottomFeeder is an open source news 
aggregator client that runs on many different operating systems 
(Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, etc.) and supports news feeds in both RSS 
and Atom formats.

While RSS isn't going away (at least not any time soon), Atom is 
trying to be more things to more people. RSS proponents are concerned 
as to what a competing standard may do to splinter the marketplace. 
After all, for quite a few years, if you wanted to burn DVDs, you had 
to choose between buying a DVD-R/W or DVD+R/W drive and cross your 
fingers that the DVDs would work on all of your equipment (e.g., DVD 
player, laptop DVD drive, desktop DVD-ROM drive, etc.). Only fairly 
recently have dual-format burners become popular to ensure consumers 
could use their burned DVD's in the way they were expecting to use 
them. Thus I foresee that if Atom picks up more momentum, we may see 
more dual-format news aggregators like BottomFeeder on the market.

Atom proponents are stymied by the freeze on the RSS core, because 
they see that there is much more that RSS is capable of doing and 
becoming. Some say that on one hand, the ability to further develop 
RSS in the Atom format (rather than stagnation) is a good thing, but 
it also adds to its complexity. That is precisely why some RSS 
proponents want to keep RSS frozen -- to keep it simple so that it 
doesn't take expensive consultants and programmers to deploy it. In 
other words, it may not be perfect, but right now it's simple enough 
and works well enough that the masses can use it. It's not hard to 
see the logic on both sides of the debate, but unfortunately, it's 
become personal for some of the key players. There's been name 
calling and other less-than-productive approaches taken, which only 
serve to cloud the issues.

Even before I created this blog, I saw the unique value that RSS news 
feeds bring to both content providers and their reader audience. Now 
I and many other bloggers are faced with the decision whether or not 
to add and support Atom-based news feeds. If the blogging software 
vendors start including Atom support out-of-the-box similar to the 
way that Movable Type included RSS support, this may not be so bad. 
With any luck, it should just be another button link on my blog 
pages. However, right now I just don't have the time to go out of my 
way and manually integrate Atom support -- especially since Atom 
isn't all that prevalent yet. However, its backers are working very 
hard on a proposal for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to 
assume responsibility for Atom, which would in effect make it a 
standard. If Movable Type and other mainstream blogger developers add 
seamless Atom support in an upgrade, that could be doable.

Google's recent decision is interesting in of itself. For a long 
time, the standard Blogger software didn't include any RSS support, 
which is why they lost bloggers to other systems like Radio Userland, 
Movable Type, and TypePad. Now, after Google's acquisition, they've 
gone exclusively with Atom support. Is Google crazy, or crazy like a 
fox? I certainly haven't chosen any side yet, but I have to admit my 
concern over RSS being frozen. Emerging technologies have a hard time 
emerging when they're not allowed to evolve. Apple tried to keep 
tight rein over their specifications, and it made them the market 
leader of a 10% market for many years, while the PC platform 
flourished. Notice that I'm not saying that one was "better" than the 
other, but rather notice the effect that strict control had on its 
adoption.

In the interim, these developments bear watching to see which 
syndication standards are appropriate to support on one's web site or 
blog. While RSS is the clear leader right now, I still remember the 
days when most people thought Betamax would be around forever as the 
clearly superior format to VHS. Such is the nature of emerging 
technologies. The moral of the story is that it's definitely too soon 
to tell, and there may be room for both standards as long as the 
context is appropriately set. Given the intensity of the debate so 
far, I think it's safe to say we're in for more colorful developments 
before it's over.

Posted by Jeff Beard


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