Rogers Cadenhead sounds skeptical about supporting RSS Cloud in most servers (never mind having the client side support for it):

RSSCloud also requires that all desktop software receiving cloud notifications functions as a web server. So if an RSS reader like BottomFeeder or FeedDemon adds cloud support, it must show its users how to turn off firewall ports to accept these incoming requests and possibly turn them off in their router as well. UserLand's attempt to put web servers on user desktops failed because it was too cumbersome to support. Back when I was writing the book Radio UserLand Kick Start and working closely with UserLand developers, their biggest customer service issue was helping users open up their firewalls so that Radio UserLand could act as a web server.

I was looking at the spec this morning, and recalled (like Rogers) that this has been part of RSS for a long time. I ignored it back when I created BottomFeeder, and haven't given it any thought since then until now. I was considering doing something as a demo, just to see how hard it would be - but I'm not sure I need my IT department asking me so much traffic is flowing out of our server :)

Technorati Tags: rss cloud, aggregator

After all the sturm and drang over Atom, we come to this from Dave Winer:

The point? There were years of strife in the RSS world over this. In the end it took less than 24 hours, beginning to end, to support the new format. We could have saved all that angst. A new format isn't that big a deal.

The big rationale for Atom was cleaning up some of the holes in the RSS spec (which, at Dave's insistence, was frozen). Since then, the RSS spec has been interpreted (which amounted to closing most of the holes), and the end result is that RSS and Atom are completely interchangeable now.

I suppose most standards fights end up this way when you look back on them...

Technorati Tags: atom