Joshua Allen has a post entitled RSS Politics which does a good job of properly framing the growing Microsoft and RSS vs. Google and Atom silliness spurred by Joi Ito that I've been seeing in the comments on Robert Scoble's weblog. Joshua writes
First, be very clear. The “debate“ over Atom vs. RSS is a complete non-issue for Microsoft. We use RSS to serve thousands of customers right now, and most of the people setting up RSS feeds have never heard of the political “debates“. RSS works for them, and that's all they care about. On the other hand, if Atom ever reaches v1.0 and we had a business incentive to use it, we would use it. No need for debate. Now, of the three or four people at Microsoft who know enough about Atom to have said anything about it, I wouldn't say that anyone has trashed the format. I and others have pointed out that it's just fine for what it does; just like RSS. If anything, I have asked hard questions about why I or any business decision maker should be spending resources on the whole debate right now. If a business has deployed using RSS, what financial motive would they have to switch to a new, nearly identical, format once it ships? I've got nothing against the Atom people inventing new syndication formats, but I just don't see why *I* should be involved right now. There's no good reason. The other comment I've made before is that the Atom community is not being served by the polarizing attitudes of some participants. The “us vs. them“ comments are not helpful, especially when untrue, and the constant personalization (”Support Atom because I hate Dave Winer!”) just damages the credibility of the whole group (many of whom might have good motives for being involved).
First, be very clear. The “debate“ over Atom vs. RSS is a complete non-issue for Microsoft. We use RSS to serve thousands of customers right now, and most of the people setting up RSS feeds have never heard of the political “debates“. RSS works for them, and that's all they care about. On the other hand, if Atom ever reaches v1.0 and we had a business incentive to use it, we would use it. No need for debate.
Now, of the three or four people at Microsoft who know enough about Atom to have said anything about it, I wouldn't say that anyone has trashed the format. I and others have pointed out that it's just fine for what it does; just like RSS. If anything, I have asked hard questions about why I or any business decision maker should be spending resources on the whole debate right now. If a business has deployed using RSS, what financial motive would they have to switch to a new, nearly identical, format once it ships? I've got nothing against the Atom people inventing new syndication formats, but I just don't see why *I* should be involved right now. There's no good reason.
The other comment I've made before is that the Atom community is not being served by the polarizing attitudes of some participants. The “us vs. them“ comments are not helpful, especially when untrue, and the constant personalization (”Support Atom because I hate Dave Winer!”) just damages the credibility of the whole group (many of whom might have good motives for being involved).
I totally echo his sentiments. In the past couple of months more and more folks at Microsoft have pinged me about syndication and blogging technologies once they learn I wrote RSS Bandit. Every single time I've given them the same advice I gave in my post, Mr. Safe's Guide to the RSS vs. ATOM debate. If you are a feed consumer you'll need to support the various flavors of RSS and the various flavors of ATOM (of which there'll at least be two, ATOM 0.3 and whatever is produced from the IETF/W3C process). If you are a feed producer, you should stick with RSS 0.91/2.0 since this is the widest supported format and the most straightforward.
Although no one has asked yet, I'm also going to give my advice on Mr. Safe at Microsoft should consider adopting the ATOM API. In my personal opinion, the current draft of the ATOM API seems better designed and falls more inline with Microsoft's technologies than the existing alternatives (Blogger API/MetaWeblog API/LiveJournal API), etc. However the API lacks lots of functionality and in fact already there are extensions to the ATOM API showing up in the wild. Currently, these "innovations" are being lauded but given the personalities behind ATOM it is likely that if Microsoft products supported the API and extended it there could be a negative backlash. In which case perhaps going with a product specific API may be the best option if there is sensitivity to such feedback or the ATOM API has to be significantly extended to fit the product's needs.