Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Microsoft Proposes RSS Extension

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Nov 22, 2005 09:31 PM
from the keep-your-hands-offa-my-calendar dept.
Microsoft IT
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie said this week that his company is working on a new extension to RSS that would help users with different contact and calendar software and services synchronize each other's information." From the article: "If this sounds familiar to those using IBM's Lotus Notes, it should. SSE was conceived after Microsoft's recently recruited chief technology officer Ray Ozzie brainstormed with members of the Exchange, Outlook, MSN, Windows Mobile and Messenger Communicator product teams shortly after he joined."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Microsoft Proposes RSS Extension 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Yay! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dduardo (592868) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:34PM (#14097388)
    Embrace and Extend!!

  • Embrace and extend (Score:4, Funny)

    by ThatGeek (874983) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:35PM (#14097393) Homepage
    Microsoft's motto is embrace and extend.

    It embraces like a boa constrictor, and then extends like a medieval torture rack.

    Microsoft, sit down, and let's hear from someone else.

    • Re:Embrace and extend (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aussie_a (778472) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:53PM (#14097498) Journal
      Right. So anytime Microsoft looks to add to an open-standard (you know, the thing open standards are meant to enable) they shouldn't be allowed? Wow, talk about openness. It's open for everyone, except those we dislike.

      Yes, Microsoft does have a habit of destroying standards by extending them. But they're going to do this regardless. They might as well work through a standards committee, and there isn't any indication that this will result in a proprietry product becoming part of the standard. Is there any reason other then "Cause Microsoft is evil" to not consider adding this extension to the standard?

      • Re:Embrace and extend (Score:5, Interesting)

        by node 3 (115640) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @11:06PM (#14097859)
        It's just one of those things where you have to defer to reality.

        Yes, theoretically, Microsoft could act responsibly and cooperatively with regards to a public standard. However, given MS's past (ie: the reality of Microsoft), it makes sense to be extraordinarily skeptical of the outcome here.

        It's like this, you have this public well in the center of town, and anyone can come and take a drink, and can volunteer to help maintain and operate the well. There's one guy in town, Prince William the Third, who is known for taking free, public services and corrupting them, selling them, and otherwise claiming such things are immoral because they don't make anyone any money. He's gone into the public park, cordoned it off and charged people to play in his area. He's set vermin free in the communal corn fields. And at the local mercantile, he always takes a penny, but never leaves a penny.

        So you see him heading to the well with a large bucket and a drill... Do you think he's going to:

        A. Drill holes into his large bucket to loop the rope through, giving to the town a larger bucket making it easier for them to bring up water.

        or

        B. Fill up his big bucket, then drill a hole into the current bucket about halfway up to make using the public bucket a bit more difficult, and oh, btw, you can buy some water from his huge bucket.

        Yeah, maybe this time MS will play fair. I wouldn't bet on it. In fact, I'd say it's extremely foolish to think they'll do anything other than subvert the standard in a way that's designed to most benefit them. That's just what they do. Every single action MS makes is designed to give them the most competitive advantage they can get. There's nothing terribly wrong with this, just don't be so naive as to pretend they're even remotely likely to do otherwise.

        It's not that we hate MS, so we don't trust them, it's that they've lost our trust, so we hate them. They could easily earn it back. IBM did it, Apple did it. Hopefully, some day MS will do it, too.

        Hopefully this will all work out for the best, but skepticism is definitely called for.
        • I fail to see how Microsoft can take an open, XML-based, plain text format that is ratified in numerous RFCs, and somehow "corrupt it" amd make it unuseable by adding some extra extentions.

          Hell, these extentions would not even break existing clients, the parser would just not do anything with the new nodes and attributes!

          But on the other hand, you are Evolution and want to sync with Outlook, this would be *great*.

          Honestly, with you guys Microsoft is damned if they to (try to create an open standard for sync
          • And, similar to this latest proposal, it's based upon existing standards which might help in curbing abuse.

            Like kerberos? Like CSS?

            I agree that the damage MS can do here is limited due to the nature of the proposed standard, but with MS, anything they promote as "open" (either open source or open standard) needs to be presumed guilty until proven innocent. This is based on their past behavior. I don't mean to say that seeking gain is wrong, just that with some corporations, you need to be more careful (from
      • I'm perfectly happy for them to add to an open standard. Just as long as their additions are kept as open as the standard was. Otherwise (for example if they patent their extensions) they're just leeching off the hard work of others, and historically such actions have mostly been anticompetitive too.

        I await the licensing of these extensions. Do you think they'll be GPL compatible?

        • Rambus, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Urusai (865560) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:25PM (#14097679)
          Didn't they work on an open JEDEC standard, only to turn around and patent it before finalization? Perhaps Microsoft will have an RSS patent ere long?
    • Microsoft has equal rights to any US Citizen and they should have their voice heard.
      US Corporations have to fight like hell these days to get their voices heard by Congress, and it's just unfair to not grant them equal rights! You progressives are all about "civil liberties, blah blah", so why don't you unite this country and [wait] Hey look! - There's a WAR over there...! I'm pulling for the guys in the grey outfits!

      w00t - Go Longhorn Devils!
      • Microsoft is big because it defines the standards.

        No, Microsfot is big because they picked up IBM's fumble and used that advantage to bugger the third-party apps developers, and hold the hardware companies hostage.

        -jcr

  • RSS Stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jimmyhat3939 (931746) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:36PM (#14097397) Homepage
    I can't stand it when they reuse acronyms. As every coder knows, SSE stands for Intel's follow-on to MMX ("streaming simd instruction set"), not "simple sharing extensions". Agh.

    Personally I think this is an example of a good technology (RSS) that Microsoft is trying to co-opt by coming out with something marginally "better" -- mostly just more complex -- so they can attain some elements of control over it.

    Oh and one other thing - they're basing it on the ideas underlying Exchange and Lotus Notes? I can't wait to see this one.

    • Re:RSS Stuff (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ergo98 (9391) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:59PM (#14097827) Homepage Journal
      Personally I think this is an example of a good technology (RSS) that Microsoft is trying to co-opt by coming out with something marginally "better" -- mostly just more complex -- so they can attain some elements of control over it.

      RSS is the absolutely height of simplicity. While that simplicity works for getting it out there and initially adopted, it does toss a wrench in it being a sustainable, growing technology. RSS is definitely showing signs of weakness (and the "next geners" are already chomping at the bit to switch to ATOM. I believe Google already tried to kill RSS), but thankfully it was built to support extensions (primarily just by supporting XML namespaces, but extensions were a part of the initial design).

      I rashly proposed my own simplistic extension to RSS [yafla.com] to great improve the mechanical interpretation of RSS entries in certain domains.

    • Why wait? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spideyct (250045) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @11:22PM (#14097929)
      >I can't wait to see this one.

      You don't have to wait, it is already published. Instead of just spouting off, go read the spec and judge it on its technical merits, instead of adding another needless me too "MS sucks so this must suck" post.

      http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/ [microsoft.com]

      Then come back and give a reasoned opinion about the flaws in the proposed extension.
  • ...would help users with different contact and calendar software and services synchronize each other's information.

    Here, let me help you with that. I think what you really meant was this: ...would help users with different Miscrosoft contact and calendar software and services synchronize each other's information.

      • "MS: "I like oranges"
        You: "I think what you really mean was.. you don't like oranges!" bwahahaha, high five guys!"

        No it's more like this.

        MS: "I like oranges"
        me: "for the last five years you have done nothing but lie to me I don't believe you for one second. Please take your hands out of your pockets so I can see if you are holding a knife. The last fifty times you knifed me it hurt like hell and cost me lots of money"

        See how that works?

  • Awesome! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Eightyford (893696) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:38PM (#14097418) Homepage
    I hope they do as good a job with RSS as they did with HTML! Actually, to be fair, Netscape was just as bad with that. But I did like the scrolling better than the blinking.

    • Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Phroggy (441) *
      Please keep in mind that Microsoft invented AJAX, without which things like Google Maps and GMail wouldn't be possible.

      Personally, I'm glad Microsoft is proposing a standard extension to RSS, instead of using their own proprietary format or protocol for this sort of thing. If you were trying to make a piece of third-party software interoperate with Exchange or Outlook, wouldn't you be glad too? Instead of trying to reverse-engineer some weird proprietary format, somebody will just extend the RSS libraries

  • Pointless (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kickboy12 (913888) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:40PM (#14097423) Homepage
    If this software/service follows the same trends as the rest of their products, Microsoft will once again be punted by somebody who takes the same concept one step further. Futher more, Microsoft will some how find a way to make this peice of software so insecure that sombody from India will be able to edit your RSS files. Then Microsoft will claim blasphemy and be yelled at by screaming Linux geeks.

    Erego; pointless.

  • Kerberos (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:47PM (#14097463)
    Any bets this extension to RSS will be like what they did to Kerberos? It will be incompatible will existing RSS implementations. Any details will have to be reverse engineered or require immense community pressure to have disclosed.

    And sombody better cross reference this to Microsoft's patent filings.
    • Any details will have to be reverse engineered or require immense community pressure to have disclosed.

      You mean the sooper sekrit details posted here [microsoft.com] under a Creative Commons license, which was linked in TFA?

      Listen, I'm not prepared to take everything they say at face value, but this is probably a step in the right direction. We have an instance where they've proposed this extension and published it, for anyone to use.

      Now, someone more technical than me will have to review what they've published and c

    • Heh. there are so many incompatible and somewhat-compatible versions and implementations of RSS out there that they can't make the situation worse (actually, they're actively trying to clean up the RSS scene by making IE7 reject malformed XML... that'll make a whole lot of people fix their shit real quick).

  • Translation! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jav1231 (539129) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:50PM (#14097483)
    Bill: "Basically, RSS is a technology we have little marketshare in and we'd like to alter to give us a chance to catch up. Eventually, of course, we will monopolise the technology bastardizing it until only our RSS reader, Internet Extreme Explorer, is the only tool that will correctly read it. What? Not a good idea? I thought it was fresh!"

  • we can predict that... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by penguin-collective (932038) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:52PM (#14097494)
    Microsoft's "new" RSS format will be XML based, it will turn out in six months that they have filed a patent on it, they will offer a RAND license, they'll submit it as an ECMA standard, and they'll proclaim that it's open. Microsoft will recruit Apple and Oracle to sign up for "free" licenses of their "standard" and proudly announce their adoption of it.

    And then Microsoft will try to create FUD (through strategically placed speakers) within the open source community whether it is really possible for open source software to implement their "open" standard. They'll do this in an effort to scare away commercial users from adopting open source software based on the "open standard".

    That way, they'll try to achieve the appearance and widespread adoption of an "open" standard while still interfering with its open source implementation.

  • why? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by soapdog (773638) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @09:58PM (#14097520) Homepage
    Why use RSS for that when vCard and iCalendar specs already cover that and are implemented by many groupware suites out there. The RFCs cover from HTTP transport of calendar and contact data as well as other MIME enclosures... And it's a simple and elegant format, it's not XML based but it works! Why reinvent the well this time? more info on vCard and iCalendar at http://www.imc.org/pdi/ [imc.org]
    • Outlook & Exchange Server already support vCard and iCal. I think there must be something more to this RSS stuff. Group calendaring is specifically mentioned (which iCal does not support AFAIK).

  • But didn't Lotus Notes suck? (Score:3, Funny)

    by OsirisX11 (598587) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:07PM (#14097577)
    "But didn't Lotus Notes suck?"

    Yeah..but....look where they are now. :)

  • RDF (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SWroclawski (95770) <sergeNO@SPAMwroclawski.org> on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:08PM (#14097585) Homepage
    RSS is a form of RDF, and so this idea of an "extension" is a little both misleading and confusing.

    Part of the point of RDF is that you can embed lots of vocabularies in a single document. You can say, for example, that a RSS publisher has an attribute FoaF document, or even arbitrary FoaF properies. Or you could use an RDF version of vCard, or RDF iCal...

    That's all been part of the Semantic Web for a long time.

    It seems that instead of the standards, the proposal is for yet another complete extension from Microsoft.

    I think RDF needs help getting the full adoption it needs, but based on what Microsoft has done to other standards (Kerberos, SPF, HTML, etc.) I don't think that this will end up being the right approach to fix any problems RSS has.

    • Re:RDF (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jerf (17166)
      "RSS" is not a form of RDF. Only "RSS 1.0" is a form of RDF, and it is, by far, not the commonly-used version. SSE is built on RSS 2.0 [harvard.edu] which is not RDF at all.

      RSS 2.0 supports XML namespaces [w3.org]. This defines such a namespace. RDF is not involved.

      • Re:RDF (Score:3, Informative)

        by SWroclawski (95770)
        Fair enough. I was't aware that RSS 2 isn't RDF based.

        But even XML namespaces makes any extension like this pretty much unecessary.

        It's a shame that RSS couldn't still be RDF... RDF needs more "killer apps".

  • Oh great, just great (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ewe2 (47163) <ewetooNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:18PM (#14097640) Homepage Journal
    So let me guess: they'll stick binary data in RSS.

    Then we have remote execution via RSS, system automation via RSS, a rootkit you never realized was there via RSS. FFS, use the tool for what it was intended, not a hacked-up stealth technology for taking over blogs and putting pretty pictures all over it.

  • response to the proposal (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChipMonk (711367) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:24PM (#14097677)
    Dear Microsoft,

    No.

    Signed,
    Everyone On The Internet

    • Re:response to the proposal (Score:5, Funny)

      by Otter (3800) on Wednesday November 23 2005, @12:14AM (#14098154) Journal
      Actually, my reaction was more:

      Dear Guy Who Invented Lotus Notes,

      If I have to use a second piece of software written by you, I swear I'll chew my fingers off.

      Signed,

      Everyone Who Has To Use That Nightmarish Piece Of Crap

  • They just have to be different. CalDAV? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kunta Kinte (323399) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:32PM (#14097714) Homepage Journal
    CalDAV is an IETF draft is is actively being worked on by a large community. Already there are interoperating implementations ( http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-dusseault-c aldav/ [isoc.org] and http://ietf.webdav.org/caldav/home.html [webdav.org] )

    Why not join in and support the effort?

    • Because supporting a standard is nothing you can brag to potential customers about. Extending $BUZZWORD so that it does things that are extremely necessary ever since We Said So gives the company the image of someone who gets the things done that other people couldn't.

      I say it's at least 70% marketing.

  • Already been done. (Score:4, Informative)

    by IGnatius T Foobar (4328) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:39PM (#14097741) Homepage Journal
    Sounds like Microsoft is trying to re-invent GroupDAV [groupdav.org], which is an open standard developed for precisely this purpose. Microsoft just has to be a childish brat and do things its own way.

  • Creative Commons (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mikeboone (163222) on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:42PM (#14097751) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft is releasing this spec under a Creative Commons license [creativecommons.org]. So perhaps it's not evil, or at least they're doing a better job of hiding the evil part!
    • IANAL, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong here, but: Even if they release the spec under a creative commons license, that doesn't stop them from patenting the ideas expressed in 'said spec, does it?

      • Re:Creative Commons (Score:5, Informative)

        by amliebsch (724858) on Wednesday November 23 2005, @01:05AM (#14098321) Journal
        From the bottom of the linked page:
        As to software implementations, Microsoft is not aware of any patent claims it owns or controls that would be necessarily infringed by a software implementation that conforms to the specification's extensions. If Microsoft later becomes aware of any such necessary patent claims, Microsoft also agrees to offer a royalty-free patent license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions to any such patent claims for the purpose of publishing and consuming the extensions set out in the specification.
        So they don't think they have any patents, and even if it turns out they do, licenses are granted under RAND terms.

        • So they don't think they have any patents,

          You're being somewhat naive; what M$ says and does are often completely different. It's a large organisation, different people have different opinions and given the mess that is the current patent system a submarine patent could easily turn up.

          and even if it turns out they do, licenses are granted under RAND terms.

          RAND terms to M$ often means "(except GPL)" and "with lots of arbitrary restrictions and sufficient legal roadblocks to make fair competition im

  • I wanna play too! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GMFTatsujin (239569) on Wednesday November 23 2005, @12:46AM (#14098267) Homepage
    Hey! I've got a great new extension for our Microsoft friends. I call it "TTF", or "The Third Finger." And it's so efficient it only requires one-fifth the bandwidth of that needed for an entire spanking.

    Please guys. Stop breaking things.

  • For the last time... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dirtside (91468) on Wednesday November 23 2005, @01:26AM (#14098368) Journal
    *sigh* No, Microsoft, you may not add the evil bit to RSS!

  • More of the same (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sir Holo (531007) on Wednesday November 23 2005, @07:38AM (#14099332)

    Microsoft's RSS Checklist:

    1) Embrace ... done
    2) Extend ... in progress
    3) Extinguish ...

    • XMLHttpRequest (Score:5, Insightful)

      by snowwrestler (896305) on Wednesday November 23 2005, @12:04AM (#14098115)
      May I point out that when IE extended the abilities of the WWW, we ended up with worms and exploits up the wazoo.

      XMLHttpRequest was one of those extensions and it's given us Gmail and other "AJAX" interfaces. Not all extension is bad; if it was how the heck would the industry progress?

    • Re:Cha? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Trigun (685027) <`xc.hta.eripmelive' `ta' `live'> on Tuesday November 22 2005, @10:56PM (#14097815)
      You have to realize that Microsoft attracts the best and the brightest. That's not the best and the brightest programmers, but the best and the brightest managers, and the best and the brightest lawyers. Even if the programmers come out with the digital version of sliced bread, the managers will do what they do best and departmentalize the task, impose deadlines, and micro-manage. The Accountants will decide how to best make a profit off of this work. And the lawyers will implement it to ensure that there is nothing free or open about it.

      It's not just Microsoft, it's business. The sad fact is that Microsoft is even better at business than it is at programming.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.