Microsoft and RSS?
This Steve Gillmor rant doesn’t make any sense. He starts by pointing out that RSS has unstoppable momentum, and that support for RSS by Microsoft sites, products, and employees is high.
But then he explains that Microsoft is ?retarding the RSS momentum?, because, as he explains, SteveB and BillG have never said the word ?RSS? in a speech. He offers no evidence that the RSS momentum is slowing (it’s not), and offers no credible reason why speechifying would help ?save? RSS. It’s a bit medieval to insinuate that all of the efforts of the thousands of people who’ve pitched in to bring RSS to where it is today are for nought without the gracious utterances of a Microsoft executive.
Maybe I’m naive, but I think that the last thing we want is for RSS to become a focal point for another round of bitter, internecine software wars. As long as people are focused on useful applications that meet user needs, rather than religious wars, we make progress. As long as RSS is just an implementation detail that geeks care about, you’ll continue to see the broad community support.And ifyou’re still having trouble seeing my point, take every instance of ?RSS? in Steve’s article and replace it with ?Wiki? — let’s take the Wiki concept and start politicizing it, speechifying and ?evangelizing? it — just what Wiki needs? I doubt it!
The latter part of the article makes somevague suggestions for killer apps. If the ideas are so good, though, it should be easy to find people (as Steve points out, there is a thriving ecosystem of people writing RSS-capable software) to proof out these ideas and make them real. The barriers to entry with RSS are very low, and all of these ideas should be very simple to prototype. None of these ideas require Bill or Steve’s permission to succeed or fail. But I realize it’s much easier to make ?an open letter to Bill Gates? with random advice than it is to go through the hard work of trying an idea yourself and risking failure.