PaceRemoveVersionAttr

Abstract

Remove version attribute

Status

Open

Rationale

The short answer is YAGNI. Which essentially means that if we do need a version "1.1", we can add a version attribute at that time.

Proposal

Remove section 4.1.1 of The Atom Syndication Format.

Impacts

Removal of a few bytes per feed.

Notes

This proposal is based on draft-ietf-atompub-format-05.txt.

Should we add a section describing both upwards and backwards compatibility? Examples:

In revisions of the Atom spec, any new elements added to the Atom namespace will be optional.
Cardinality of existing elements will not change. (example: required elements will not be made optional)

The goal would be that all valid Atom 1.0 feeds will be valid in all subsequent versions of Atom. Furthermore, all consumers of Atom feeds that ignore elements that they don't understand will never need to change.

If there ever is need for a new syndication formation which can't conform to these requirements, it is either done in a new namespace, either as an Atom 2.0 or as a new standard.