[HN Gopher] Question the W3C's advice re RSS
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Question the W3C's advice re RSS
Author : ajdude
Score : 25 points
Date : 2023-06-26 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scripting.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scripting.com)
| evmar wrote:
| It's incredible that this person is still reliably trying to stir
| up drama about RSS after twenty years.
| gerikson wrote:
| I suggest using Atom instead and avoiding a whole lot of
| confusion and drama by not implementing RSS 2.0.
| kevincox wrote:
| I suggest publishing with Atom. However if you are consuming
| feeds you will probably want to support RSS 2.0 as well as
| various buggy implementations and some earlier RSS versions.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Yep. Use RSS if you're dealing with podcasting, because most of
| those platforms don't support Atom (and it's basically all
| Apple's fault--they took over and froze the space at a certain
| point in time _just_ before Atom became popular and fixed up
| the mess that was RSS), but use Atom for _all_ other feeds,
| because it's just hands-down better than RSS, in ways that
| occasionally even matter (as in, will cause some software to
| mangle your content, most commonly your titles if you use stuff
| that could look like HTML).
| throw0101a wrote:
| A requirements update from August 2022:
|
| > _Apple Podcasts will make the following updates to RSS feed
| requirements in 2023:_
|
| [...]
|
| > _Atom feeds_
|
| > _Update: No longer supported_
|
| > _New shows in Atom feed format will no longer be accepted
| and any remaining shows will no longer be updated._
|
| * https://podcasters.apple.com/4115-technical-updates-for-
| host...
|
| WTF Apple?
|
| AFAICT Google Podcasts is doing the same as Apple and only
| using RSS 2.0.
|
| Nothing is stopping people from providing both RSS 2.0 and
| Atom, and given that most feeds are probably auto-generated,
| probably not hard to do so, but it is disappointing.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Apple and Google did this because (1) alternative feed
| formats like Atom or JSON Feed weren't being used, and (2)
| a few years ago, the podcasting industry and standards
| bodies chose to require RSS for extensions/enhancements.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > alternative feed formats like Atom or JSON Feed weren't
| being used
|
| What?
|
| I think about half of the RSS feeds I subscribe to are
| Atom-based.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I think about half of the RSS feeds I subscribe to are
| Atom-based._
|
| Meaning, they have an `atom` namespace declaration?
| Because that's very common in RSS feeds, and is required
| for Podcast Standards Project-compliant feeds. Apple
| supports RSS feeds that use the `atom` namespace.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| (You're making me cringe, calling Atom feeds RSS feeds.
| Just "feeds" is a perfectly good word.)
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Atom wasn't being used in podcasting _because it wasn't
| supported by key podcasting platforms!_ I know from my
| research of multiple entities that tried to use Atom
| (since it's obviously and unambiguously superior),
| particularly because of some things that claimed Atom was
| supported, but gave up because it turned out that even
| most of the platform things that claimed support didn't
| actually support it, either at all or fully. As for
| things like JSON Feed, that's never been a serious
| contender.
|
| This Apple Podcasts update saying "we no longer support
| Atom" genuinely surprises me, because when I looked a
| couple of years ago, as far as I could tell as an
| outsider with no access to any of their software, they
| didn't support Atom, _and never had_.
|
| I'm not certain what you're referring to as "the
| podcasting industry and standards bodies", since I
| haven't been paying attention to the space (a couple of
| years back it seemed a bleak wilderness). If it's things
| like https://podstandards.org/, well, "Apple has created
| some thoughtful vendor-specific extensions to the RSS
| standard"... bleh. I cannot understand how anyone could
| have anything but scorn for the mess that is podcasting
| RSS. It's _shamefully_ bad, and the paragraphs there are
| rather baffling to me in their untempered praise for
| Apple and condemnation of (unspecified) others. As for
| their standard, they're explicitly standards-washing
| certain Apple interests (though I will admit that _most_
| of the iTunes namespace stuff is generally useful),
| adding stuff that has no place in a "required standard" (
| _funding_!? And what happened to the <link rel>
| mechanism for some of that stuff, which would obviously
| be appropriate? There really looks to be a _lot_ of
| poorly-thought out stuff in this).
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Atom wasn't being used in podcasting_ because it
| wasn't supported by key podcasting platforms _!_
|
| But Apple did for many years, no? If Atom was obviously
| and unambiguously better for the use case, Atom would've
| been successful for that use case.
|
| > _I cannot understand how anyone could have anything but
| scorn for the mess that is podcasting RSS._
|
| I built a reasonably popular podcast feed validator and
| don't understand which part is a mess. If you wouldn't
| mind sharing, I know the Podcast Standards Project folks
| are considering what their next project should be.
|
| > _...the paragraphs there are rather baffling to me in
| their untempered praise for Apple and condemnation of
| (unspecified) others._
|
| Spotify's embrace/extend/extinguish approach successfully
| killed the original "open medium" meaning of the word
| "podcasting". Whatever your other critiques of Apple,
| they worked within the RSS standard.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Podcasting uses RSS because alternatives like Atom and JSON
| Feed don't solve a problem in this space. New podcasting
| standards (Podcast Standards Project, Podcasting 2.0) are
| supported by extending RSS, which is now explicitly required.
| (Apple is just a consumer of RSS -- they don't use RSS
| between their back-end and their podcast app.)
| chrismorgan wrote:
| RSS is an awful mess. Atom was invented in significant part
| to fix the problems of RSS (things like the content
| encoding disaster), and it _succeeded_. Except that, while
| everyone else accepted it (most things use Atom rather than
| RSS, admittedly with a few rather notable and massive
| holdouts), the podcasting industry ignored it.
|
| The way RSS and especially podcasting RSS just pulls in
| bits and pieces from everywhere haphazardly, regularly
| ending up expressing the same thing three or four times, is
| an indictment against it. And if making <atom:link>
| mandatory doesn't make you boggle (pulling in _one element_
| from the competing and superior standard, in what is at the
| very least a very mild abuse of the XML namespace--not that
| RSS cares about XML conventions on namespaces), nothing
| will.
| safety1st wrote:
| The drama around it is awkward, but I think Winer has a point
| about the success of RSS being at least partially attributable
| to it not changing. The immediate analogy that springs to mind
| is email, also archaic, also widely adopted, you don't have to
| fear that there will be breaking changes or some company will
| decide it's going away tomorrow. You just use it and it works.
| (RSS actually had that apocalyptic moment when Google Reader
| shut down, did it die? Nope.)
|
| The net result is that RSS is low maintenance, the
| implementations out there are stable and have been around for
| years, very little work needs to be done on code which deals
| with RSS, millions of websites continue using it and no one has
| to lose any sleep over it.
|
| Not that I wouldn't like to see any improvements at all. It
| would be nice if these guys could set aside their differences
| and say look, we'll do an update of some kind and increment the
| major version by 1, say, every 10-15 years. Yes that's
| practically glacial in Internet time, maybe that's actually
| good.
| ajdude wrote:
| I'll summarize my thoughts mentioned in the Github issue[1]:
|
| > I think this comes down to who W3C considers the authority for
| RSS2 today.
|
| > While from a technical standpoint [both Dave's and RSSBoard's
| spec] are identical, they do have some differences .... and if
| rssboard comes up with a new donations attribute for <item> and
| the Harvard site doesn't list it, which copy should W3C run their
| validator against?
|
| [1] https://github.com/w3c/feedvalidator/issues/106
| brycewray wrote:
| No HTTPS for this site? :-/
| raspyberr wrote:
| What would you have gained from reading the site in HTTPS?
| mcherm wrote:
| Confidence that Verizon (my internet service provider) would
| not know what article I was reading (although they would
| still know what servers I was connecting to) and would not be
| selling that information to anyone.
| meatmanek wrote:
| Additionally, confidence that your ISP is not injecting ads
| onto the page.
| mcherm wrote:
| Yes!
| davewiner wrote:
| http://this.how/googleAndHttp
| brycewray wrote:
| Yes, sir, later was directed by someone else to your opinion
| on this issue. I understand your points (while respectfully
| disagreeing).
|
| All that said, thanks for your wholehearted efforts over the
| years on behalf of RSS and all of us who still enjoy using
| it.
| CharlesW wrote:
| http://scripting.com/2014/08/08/myBlogDoesntNeedHttps.html
| brycewray wrote:
| Ah. Thanks, wasn't aware.
|
| (In 2014, he _might_ have had a tiny point --- but, now...
| Hmm.)
| jerf wrote:
| It's still not the easiest to come up with an attack of
| consequence against what is basically a static site that is
| worth an attacker's time. You can draw out scenarios,
| certainly, but most of them are some combination of
| "doesn't matter" and "if that's the goal, there's a better
| and easier way to do it".
|
| I ran on that philosophy for a long time too, but Let's
| Encrypt tipped the balance for me. When TLS certs cost real
| money it was easy to decide that the super-marginal
| security benefits for my minimal readers weren't worth
| hundreds of my dollars a year. Now it's more on the order
| of "incidental noise in what it took to set the website up
| anyhow", so I go for it.
| politelemon wrote:
| The entire Github thread felt unpleasant to read due to (what I
| perceived as) the passive aggressive responses. In a way it
| solidifies my choice to go with ATOM for my org rather than RSS,
| there's too much confusion for end-implementers in this space.
|
| https://github.com/w3c/feedvalidator/issues/106
| ajdude wrote:
| Related:
|
| W3C and My RSS Spec (scripting.com)
|
| 27 points by Tomte 8 days ago | 21 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377953
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(page generated 2023-06-26 23:02 UTC)