Comments on: Microsoft to bolster RSS support

Company is proposing extension to Really Simple Syndication that's designed to enable better support of ordered information lists.

[raitchison]

Embrace & Extend - Here we go again

Sounds like the old days where MS inserts it's own "tweaks" into a standard and then it gets to the point where products that use the actual (untweaked) standard are shut out of the market.

I guess it worked for them an IE, they extended HTML and soon lots of web sites only rendered "properly" in IE (because they were written improperly).

Shall I assume the goal here is to lock out non-Microsoft RSS readers like Firefox & Thunderbird?

Sorry, experience has taught me cynicism.

[nmcphers]

cynicism not applicable

Cynicism is hardly applicable when Microsoft is the subject because most negative usually ARE true. Saying Microsft's intention is to extend and extinguish is more of a statment of fact as opposed to beinh a general negative comment. They have made it so.

[nrlz]

but RSS is extensible

But RSS is essentially XML which is designed to be extensible. As long as Microsoft adds a suitable namespace for their code, it should be okay. And if they don't, well the XML just won't validate.