Atom isn't about RSS. Atom is a lot more than just syndication. RSS could well be warped into doing more but what's the point? There's already significant momentum behind the truly open, collaborative and collegial effort seen thus far with Atom. What possible benefit would it do to Atom to take a step backwards?
RSS has reached it's zenith. It does what it does and pretty well at that. Why bother bringing it's baggage to Atom?
http://scriptingnews.userland.com/2003/07/18#When:12:44:12PM
PS: I wonder why people are so obsessed with Dave Winer and bending his will to theirs.
Seeking Common and Open Ground.
There seems lack of such confidence in Atom wiki, or I fail to see that
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/comments?u=tech&p=24&link=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.law.harvard.edu%2Ftech%2F2003%2F07%2F18%23a24
anyway the progress of Atom should not be affected much by that move.
It's curious to hear talk of "finding common ground" between RSS 2.0 and Atom, yet barely a word of common ground with other versions. Curious because recent statistics suggest that there are more RSS 1.0 feeds (26%) than RSS 2.0 (14%) and more RSS 0.91 feeds (47%) than those of 1.0 and 2.0 put together.
Personally I agree with Bill about it being a retrograde step to force Atom into the RSS family tree. But if we are to consider any form of backwards compatibility, wouldn't either 0.91 (most adoption, less baggage) or 1.0 (most sophistication) make a more suitable parent?