RSS, or why lack of developer imagination will be the end of the open web
▻http://decafbad.net/2020/08/11/rss-or-why-lack-of-developer-imagination-will-be-the-end-of-the-open-web
I’m tired of company indifference dictating the developer mindset. Lack of RSS feeds means one less avenue for me to poll for new items. It also prevents other creative and unintended uses of those items. RSS wasn’t just about allowing folks to read news items in a RSS reader; it also allowed devices to update content based on new items, side-bar widgets, crossposting to various social media outlets, and many more. It meant that someone could take a standard protocol and repurpose it in new ways. This is the very essence of the open web, and I fear that losing this spirit of remixing and repurposing means we’ll be locked into dull, purpose-built technologies again. I’m a creative person but I’m not nearly as creative as some of you, and I’m definitely not as creative as the rest of the world. Who knows what you might do with the RSS feed for this blog, or with the RSS feed of my podcasts, or my Mastodon RSS feeds. Frankly I don’t have to care; being an open protocol you can do whatever you want with them. That’s powerful.
