Re: [syndication] Re: Thoughts, questions, and issues.

[Rael Dornfest <rael@oreilly.com>]

Howdy,

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 ed@epicentric.com wrote:

> --- In syndication@egroups.com, Aaron Swartz <aswartz@s...> wrote:
> > This is becoming a bit of a FAQ. Once again, we want
> > backwards-compatibility. This is the way it was done in RSS 0.9 
> (for no good
> > reason) and we didn't want to change it. This was fixed in RSS 0.91 
> (which
> > most of you use) but the new spec is based on 0.9. Does that make 
> sense?
> 
> I'm sure this has been answered already, but why do we need to be 
> backwards compatible with 0.9?  Didn't someone post here that only 
> like 11% of RSS feeds were in 0.9?

I believe you're referring to Ian Davis's "2nd RSS Survey Results"[1], a
follow-up to an earlier "RSS Survey"[2] conducted back in May.

One should note that the sudden change in 0.9 vs 0.91 support was
partially the result of a switch by one major feed provider; note the
"was" percentages in the following snippet[1]:

  RSS 0.90: 198 (11%, was 50%)
  RSS 0.91: 1439 (80%, was 46%)

The following factors combined guided our decision to go back to 0.9:

  * The 50%/46% ratio suggested that many folks found no compelling
    reason to upgrade to 0.91.

  * 0.9 seemed simpler to grok.

  * yet 0.9 had an existing RDF base and support for XML Namespaces.
    Putting RDF and namespace-support back into 0.91 was rather like
    attempting to put the toothpaste back into the tube.

Rael

[1] http://www.egroups.com/message/syndication/330
[2] http://www.topica.com/lists/alchemy/read/message.html?mid=1700563039

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