Very Interesting -- the recent RSS "developments" seem to have led UserLand toward the ICE protocol for content management and syndication (it's too early to tell for sure though). I remember being on the ICE list back in early 1998, which was hosted by Vignette. There were contributors from Adobe, NewsCorp, and CNet as well.

The list was very technical, very spec-driven, and not very conversational. I didn't feel comfortable asking questions on that list so I left.

Home Page: ICE - Information Content Exchange (original outdated link)

UserLand seemed to be fighting for simplicity in RSS; but ICE is a lot more complex than RSS. Why the sudden extreme shift? I have an opinion, but I'll keep it to myself.

However, here's an interesting message on the UserLand DG about ICE, from March 1999.

Dave Winer: ICEing RSS

"Further, RSS looks great to me, with just a little more icing on it, simple stuff based on XML-RPC it will be able to do everything ICE can do, without requiring a $50K tariff to Vignette.

If you guys are serious about working with us, we'll take another look, but you're going to have to stop trying to steer this industry unilaterally."

Now it appears O'Reilly has acted unilaterally on behalf of RSS. I think you can figure out the rest of the story from here.