Taka at Awasu on Longhorn RSS

The guy who builds my favourite aggregator goes into Friday's announcement from Microsoft on their RSS plans for

Firstly, Microsoft announced their Simple List Extensions. This is a pretty trivial extension and while useful, its not exactly earth-shattering. Some people have complained that Microsoft are up to their old tricks and trying to commandeer and take over an existing, widely-used technology in order to twist it into a proprietary format but this is wrong. SLE is an extension to RSS, something that RSS specifically encourages.

In the very early days of Awasu, I wrote a document in which I said that RSS could be considered simply as a means of transporting information around. And it doesn't have to be limited to news or blog posts. Just look at enclosures, piggy-backing on feed items as they move around the net via RSS. Furthermore, using XML namespaces, people can embed whatever information they like into a feed and ship it around using RSS.

The entire architecture of Awasu reflects this underlying concept of RSS as a transport system for information .

Another thing that I said in the document was that RSS was not going to be all that important in itself. What I meant by that was that RSS was simply going to be the first step along the way to something much bigger. ... Dare Obasanjo had it right when he said that “Using XML syndication is an evolution in the way people interact with content on the web”.

The second part of the announcement concerns Microsoft's strategy for RSS in Longhorn. This is, of course, much more significant. Some people have already asked me what this means for Awasu. Here's my take on it:

I'm not worried at all.

Go read the rest at Awasu.

My only thought on reading the announcement is that it was kind of sad, here is the biggest name in software, getting all enthused about RSS as if it was something new terribly exciting when its been around for an Internet age and when guys like Taka are saying its not that important in itself, its what you do with it.

MS was late to GUI, it was late to the net and its late to RSS, demonstrating yet again the axiom that, beyond a certain minimum size, organisations lose the ability even to recognise, let alone deal, let alone lead with, innovation.

Comments

[Fazal Majid]

The most important thing about MS' announcement, in my opinion, is that now that MS has "blessed" RSS, all the laggards who were sitting the fence or not clued-in to begin with, will start investigating. The enterprise RSS marketplace is going to explode after this.

[Earl Mardle]

Majid,

That's an interesting possibility. Given that you don't need MS permission to implement RSS and especially since people like Taka have been developing enterprise applications already, it will be interesting to see whether there is a flood or whether the natural growth will overtake most people anyway.

My bet is with Taka. First they have to get LongHorn out and given the sliding deadline on that, I suspect that MS will be playing catchup rather than leading the pack.

[Fazal Majid]

I didn't mean Microsoft will take over RSS, just that it has now given RSS instant credibility among the lemmings who will not even consider anything not blessed by Redmond. That PR boost outside the geek/early-adopter community is probably the most important aspect to MS' announcement.

Even today, 50% of business PCs run Windows 2000 (my company's do). The upgrade from XP SP2 to XP SP3 (a.k.a Longhorn) will be even less compelling and it will take 5-10 years for the transition to happen. The only interesting feature in Longhorn so far is InfoCard (assuming it does not get culled like WinFS or Avalon), and it doesn't have any bearing on RSS/Atom. In other words, Longhorn will not be a major factor in the marketplace until long after the battle is lost and won.

In all likelihood, RSS integration in Office (as a mailbox type in Outlook, as a data source for Excel) is going to be much more important than any RSS support in Windows itself.

Hey, I'm all for the little guy. After all, according to Tim Bray, my own aggregator, Temboz, has a market share almost 55% of Awasu's...

[Earl Mardle]

Dawning light. It never occurred to me that users would be afraid of stuff that ISN'T MS. Holy cow, I use anything but unless I absiolutely have to.

I saw you link to the Win2K/XP issue. I suppose MS' big problem is that the closer it gets to a real OS, the less need there will be to upgrade. After all, we are now at the point where the least system exceeds the overt requirements of the vast majority of users.

The conundrum is that if it is to work properly and not scare the horses, as Taka says, it will probably have to be almost invisible, but to gain from the MS adoption, it needs to be on the surface.

Hey, and congratulations on Temboz, I must have a look.

[Fazal Majid]

Actually Taka has an edge - Microsoft must artificially ensure its newest features are delivered only on Longhorn and (grudgingly, as with IE7) on XP2, but most certainly not on Win2K, otherwise nobody would upgrade from the good-enough (and arguably superior due to less bloat) Win2K.

Microsoft's worst competitor is their installed base, not Linux or Apple (yet). Awasu is not under the same self-imposed restrictions excluding 50% of the addressable market, and can benefit from MS' PR efforts today, when MS does not have a competing product that actually, well, ships.

Have a look at the Mini-Microsoft blog (minimsft.blogspot.com) to understand the feeling of malaise within the Redmond giant about their staff bloat and unability to deliver shipping products.