MS Reveals Info On New RSS Extensions 146
dizzy_p writes "Microsoft released yesterday more information on their earlier announced extensions to the RSS format(s). The specifications can be found on MSDN. The question is, will the mainstream developer adopt these specifications, or will they only live in the Microsoft "Blogosphere" (To quote MSDN). The specifications in question are named Microsoft Simple Sharing Extensions Specification and Microsoft Simple List Extensions Specification"
Ah yes... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ah yes... (Score:1)
Remember -- Embrace and Extend. Incorporate into your own browser, and nobody elses so everyone breaks accept IE.
Hopefully, it will fail this time, but.....
Re:Ah yes... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the Microsoft way...
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
Re:Ah yes... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/ [microsoft.com] reads pretty much like an IETF RFC. MS have done some thinking and given their ideas to the public internet. Good for them.
Re:Ah yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
"http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/ reads pretty much like an IETF RFC."
Okay, it looks like an RFC, but why isn't it an RFC?
Besides the fact that RSS doesn't appear to have been submitted [harvard.edu] to the IETF either, of course. Both the MS extension and original RSS spec were released under Creative Commons licenses. So what's the point of releasing a spec without going through the standards process? It depends on the motives of the issuer, doesn't it?
I personally am strongly opposed to this kind of unilateralism. I'm not a big fan of Dave Winer's approach to things, and I'm even less of a fan of MS'. Having worked on the web almost from the day it was born, I can speak from experience, and MS has been a divisive force from the moment they cottoned on to this Internet thing, almost single-handedly creating the security nightmare we have today by plying half-educated cargo-cult 'developers' with convenience and ease of use that turned out to be easy for anyone to exploit.
So please, when we look at this issue, let's not forget two things:
The (false?) naivete that the parent espouses does nothing to change my suspicion that this new 'standard' from MS is any different from what came before. MS are relying on just this kind of cursory investigation ('He must be a judge; he's wearing a robe!') to insinuate these extensions into the mainstream.
I would trust them a lot more if they took the time to actually cooperate with the community, and to follow the well-established processes that exist. They've buckled down and done so in the past, so why can't they do it this time?
Re:Ah yes... (Score:2)
- Andrew Tanenbaum
Re:Ah yes... (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst offender is Active X. Great if you are running Windows and Internet Explorer but bad for the rest of the world. Of course when Microsoft proposed this they were going to give it to the world and provide the tools for all platforms but that never happened. Now we have websites and even embedded devices that will only work on their platform. Of course
Proprietary? (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Proprietary? (Score:2)
Re:Ah yes... (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Ah yes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also here [msn.com] is a blog post by its creator if you want to read more about and what it is meant to accomplish without digging through the spec.
Not bad!
Re:Ah yes... (Score:1)
Deck
-----------------
"Half a deck is better than none at all"
Answer: moderately (Score:5, Interesting)
The List Extension sounds less useful to me; it basically sets up fields to define ways to sort and group RSS feeds (like you can do with a SQL query). This one strikes me as less well thought-out and partially redundant with an RSS reader which could sort on any field. That's especially true for your basic blog-like RSS feed, where the set of fields in use is limited. It looks like this is a piece of a much larger generalized query mechanism using RDF.
I'm not an RSS expert so I can't say how necessary these extensions are. But I'll remind everybody that most new standards come out as somebody initially saying, "Here, try this!" and the ones that like stick and are eventually blessed by a standards committee. HTML predates the W3C, and HTML got a good bit of bashing around trying to find the Right Thing in practice rather than having a standards committee guess what was right.
So I'd recommend that people developing RSS readers consider adding these features and see if their users like them.
Microsoft this, and Microsoft that... (Score:1)
This is a forum for freedom of expression, not fascist moves.
Re:Plenty Useful.... (Score:2)
Remember?
Adding to things? (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of attitude is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
That's not the way Microsoft works. That's not the way Cisco works. That's not the way any dominant player in a space would be inclined to work (this principle seems to hold from technology all the way to geopolitics).
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:1)
yes quite.
Extend, embrace, divide, conquer
Cisco? (Score:2, Informative)
Granted that MS is also mentioned in some of such efforts, but still I think there is a place for Cisco to be offended from such a comparison as you used.
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
I don't think Ada is a good example for a poorly designed standard, but that's a different matter. I'm not saying standards should be designed-by-comittee up-front. If a company has the market power to set a de-facto standard, so be it. They should do so by offering products, maybe even whitepapers, but calling it a "standard" from the beginning
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
That's a valid point, and of course we are talking matters of style here. But if you look at the page, it says: This page offers the latest news and advice for RSS developers. and then it goes on to list several "Microsoft ... Extensions Specifications". No, they are not calling them "standards", yes, they are publishing them as such. At least that's how it appears to me. Granted, the original developer's documents sound a lot more dow
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
Maybe I missed something...but, what the hell are you talking about? RSS is already a standard, and Microsoft is publishing an "extension," as they clearly state.
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:3, Insightful)
That is correct, they are calling it an "extension". But still, a "Microsoft Extension Specification" (which is the full term they use on the web site) sounds a whole lot different than a "Microsoft RFC" or a "Microsoft Extension Draft" or a "Microsoft Proposal". As I said in another post, this is very much a matter of style. But look to IBM
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:1, Insightful)
IBM does things entirely the same way, by the way, as does Google, Sun, Apple, and everyone else. That's if they're nice enough to making it unburdened and
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
Beg to differ. "This page offers the latest news and advice for RSS developers," if you want it in a nutshell. Not just they are going to follow it; they suggest very strongly that this is how things are going to be in the future.
I don't like this. That's what I said.
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
Yes, well, you ALSO said:
This is what I was questioning.Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
I grant you they are not calling it a "standard". That was an inference I made from their way of presenting it. I stand by my suspicion that they expect everybody to follow suit, without them feeling a need to cooperate with other partners within the industry.
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:1)
It's the Microsoft Developer Network. The site is for Microsoft-centric developers. Microsoft can say "English for Developers" and present a specification, just as they can say "Naming Guidelines for Developers". It's just an extension for RSS, like there are dozens of other extensi
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:1)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
Because we all know that some high school kid with enough time to submit his biased rantings to Wikipedia must be the ultimate authority. After all, it's on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is decent and holy open-source knowledge portal that can't ever be wrong [bbc.co.uk].
Please stop using Wikipedia as a reference for anything but the most apolitical, factual topics... you'll seem a lot more credible.
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:3, Funny)
Ridiculous!
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:1)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2, Interesting)
And BTW, I'll take a standard developed by a governing body or company any day over a hacked-together "standard" like RSS or yENC or any of those others developed by people in their basement. While they are often "good enough", they tend to be underdocumented, hard to extend/adapt and are the source of wide-ranging pointless flamewars on teh interwebs. More often tha
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
Re:What kind of attitude is that? (Score:2)
That's not to say it's always (or even usually) a good thing - see ActiveX and the like - but to condemn it outright is silly.
Java (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Java (Score:3, Insightful)
Embrace and extend will not work as well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Webmaster's want to maximise the number of people who can productively use their site. Given the choice of Microsoft's custom format or a format submitted [atompub.org] to the IETF for an RFC number I know which one I'd rather use.
Simon.
Yeah, right... (Score:2)
Re:Embrace and extend will not work as well.. (Score:1)
Re:Embrace and extend will not work as well.. (Score:1)
Umm....
Since in 5 years, the majority of users who use RSS (like the web-browser, media player, etc.) will be using whatever Microsoft decides to plunk down on their desktop, all they have to do is require a few "proprietary" extensions and methods, and you'll see just how fast webmasters will conform to Microsoft's standards rather than the actual ones.
I mean, we are talking about the same Microsoft, right?
Re:Embrace and extend will not work as well.. (Score:2)
Re:Embrace and extend will not work as well.. (Score:2)
Licensed Under Creative Commons (Score:5, Informative)
This license [creativecommons.org] is more simple, but the same in principle, to the GPL.
Re:Licensed Under Creative Commons (Score:2)
Re:Licensed Under Creative Commons (Score:2, Interesting)
(I don't believe "debateabley" is a word. If someone has a better way to phrase it, please feel free to suggest it.)
Re:Licensed Under Creative Commons (Score:2)
Also: It appears to me (IANAL, etc...) that the attribution requirement of the CC-BY-SA [creativecommons.org]
is not fundamentally different from the GPL's [gnu.org]
Actually, having just read through that in order to quote it, I've realised that no-where does it REQUIRE that the "appropriate copyright notice" include the original copyright owne
Re:Licensed Under Creative Commons (Score:2, Interesting)
IANAL and so forth, nor am I a FSF authority. I just spout off whatever nonsense seems to make vague sense in my head!
SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:4, Interesting)
What?
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:2)
What's the "royalty-free" part mean then?
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:2)
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:2)
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:2)
This is the same company that submarined the SPF remember?
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:2)
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:4, Informative)
Although royalty can mean "payment to the holder of a patent or copyright or resource for the right to use their property"[2], which would prevent Microsoft from charging for patent licenses applicable to their RSS Extensions, it more commonly means "a share of the profit or product reserved by the grantor"[3] or "compensation that is paid to the owner of an asset based on income earned by the asset's user"[4], which essentially limits Microsoft to a flat-fee license. Royalty free doesn't mean that they necissarily will charge for licenses but it seems to mean that they could.
Although they say the terms will be "reasonable and non-discriminatory", I don't know what that means. I would hope it means that they don't discriminate against Free software, commercial software, competitors, people without money to pay for a license, etc. but it's very vague--perhaps there's a legal meaning or it's just there to sound nice.
I think the patent trap idea is a bit out there--I don't think it's going to happen--but it doesn't seem that Microsoft is guaranteeing that it won't happen.
Sources
[1]http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/ [microsoft.com]
Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
[2] WordNet ® 2.0
Copyright © 2003 Princeton University
[3] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
[4] Wall Street Words: An A to Z Guide to Investment Terms for Today's Investor by David L. Scott.
Copyright © 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:2)
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:2)
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:2)
Re:SSE Licensing information enigma (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why ECMA is a joke. ECMA should not allow patented standards. It's an oxymoron.
Presumptions... (Score:2, Insightful)
The great thing about standards ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The great thing about standards ... (Score:3)
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Waiting for my head to explode (Score:5, Funny)
R is for "really" (Score:1, Insightful)
GeoRSS anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
From slashgisrs [slashgisrs.org]: A team is working on Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS feeds. From the overview: "GeoRSS is simple proposal for RSS feeds to also be described by location or Geotagged. We standardize the way in which "where" is encoded with enough simplicity and descriptive power to satisfy most needs to describe the location of Web content. [...] it should serve as an easy-to-use geotagging language that is brief and simple with useful defaults but extensible and upwardly-compatible with more sophisticated formats like the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) GML (Geography Markup Language)".
GeoRSS is really an interesting innovation from the actual concept of RSS.
Yet another bastardized standard (Score:2)
2 cents,
Queen B
Oh the Joy (Score:1)
Re:Oh the Joy [excuse the previous mess up] (Score:1)
Standard: HTML
Contribution: <marquee>
enough said...
Obviously.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Rss and VB 2005 (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.developer.com/net/vb/article.php/35671
"In no time, you can build a simple RSS viewer that takes a user-entered RSS feed URL and retrieves the title, description, and link for that channel."
And so now we can expect a rapid proliferation of readers that don't work with every other RSS feed in the world; they will require the 'Microsoft Extensions' (I am assuming this of the VB implementation, either now or in the future). RSS feeds and readers alike will eventually have to implement it one way or the other.
I don't know what the plan for World Domination here is, but it goes something like this:
1) Wedge yourself in the middle where no one wants or needs you
2) ???
3) Profit!
Re:Rss and VB 2005 (Score:3, Funny)
Is that the result of outsourcing VB development to India?
Re:Rss and VB 2005 (Score:2, Funny)
Why O Why (Score:2, Interesting)
EEE (Score:2, Insightful)
Duh, guys... (Score:2)
Coming Soon to a Win32 box near you... ActiveRSS.NET(SP9)
Dear MS (Score:1)
In Addition.... (Score:2, Funny)
faux-standards again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Otherwise, this undos everything, i.e. takes the simple out of RSS
Re:Embrace, extend... (Score:2)
Re:Embrace, extend... (Score:2)
Yes because we've all seen what a failure Bill Gates and Microsoft have been over the last 20 years.
-Rick
Re:Embrace, extend... (Score:2)
Re:Embrace, extend... (Score:2)
Is a successful monopoly for Microsoft success for you as their customer/client?
Re:yay (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Typical embrace, extend..... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Muddling the mix (Score:2)
Re:Embrace and extend? What's the big deal? (Score:2)
Re:Embrace and extend? What's the big deal? (Score:2)