You would expect much more from otherwise intelligent and rational people. I agree with Nick, “I’m not sure what the point of all of this is.” I’m glad none of the people actually writing software get caught up in this because then they wouldn’t have any time to do anything useful.
I really don’t know why they make such a fuss. RSS has a basic flaw that makes it difficult to determine the content model of the
descriptionelement. Atom, among other things, removes this ambiguity.The way I see it, RSS is fine for doing summaries (which is what the original RSS was for, I suppose), but when richer content is needed, Atom is the way to go. Dave Winer suggests that it might be possible to clarify the spec of RSS to fix this problem, but that amounts to a revision. Besides, what would be the point? Atom already takes care of the RSS problems, but at the expense of being more complex.
It saddens me that incredibly intelligent people, like Dave and Mark, can be reduced to bickering like school children. Neither has anything to prove – there is no BEST format. They are similar formats, but they cater to different needs and markets.