Silly Atomic RSS

What am i missing about Tim Bray’s description of “atomic rss“? I know a bit about rss, i know a lot less about atom and i bet there are many good and valid reasons for atom’s existance, otherwise there wouldn’t have been so many smart people working away on it for months and months, but this article makes atom look a little silly. The basic premise of atomic rss seems to be “try this new thing that’s just like the old thing but sooo much hotter right now, there aren’t any real differences or obvious benefits but you just have to rename some elements, oh, and these rss elements it doesn’t support? You don’t really need them anyway.” I am missing something here, right?

# Jul 29, 2005 at 13:16

2 Responses

  1. There’s a rundown of the differences here:

    http://www.tbray.org/atom/RSS-and-Atom

    Comment by Rob on Jul. 29th, 2005, at 17:25 #

  2. Thanks for the link, but i’m aware of the main differences between atom and rss and this post isn’t meant as a critique of atom, but “atomic rss” as described in Tim Bray’s article. This notion of “atomic rss” doesn’t highlight any real differences or benefits and looks like an attempt to lure people who already offer an overwhelming number of syndication feeds (RSS 0.91, 1.0, 2.0, excerpts, full content, you name it) to jump on the next bandwagon for no compelling reason at all. I find this degrading to atom and in no way beneficial to the syndication landscape.

    Comment by christoph on Jul. 29th, 2005, at 23:16 #