RSS Advisory board finds a new way to extend RSS

You have to give Rogers Cadenhead credit. After enduring several weeks of blistering attacks by Dave Winer over attempts to create a new version of RSS 2.0, he is once again trying to improve RSS. This time, Rogers and his fellow members of the RSS Advisory Board are proposing a new RSS namespace called XRSS. He evidently came to the same decision as I did with OPML. If the only way Dave will allow RSS or OPML to be extended is by the use of a new namespace, then that is what has to be done.

The funny thing is that I just tried to write an explanation of the difference between using a namespace and changing the core format, and I can't find a way to do it that shows why one is better than another. In the end, an application that uses these extensions still has to know what to do with them. The only benefit seems to be that a namespace gives the application permission to ignore the new tag. I can hear the crickets chirping right now. This is not a subject that will hold an audience. I'm going to start working with namespaces in OPML, and perhaps then I'll find a way of explaning them that won't make normal humans run screaming out of the room.