If you're an RSS proponent, it's easy to call what Mark Pilgrim has been doing on his weblog 'anti-RSS FUD'. If you're an Atom proponent, it's easy to say "hey, we're making a statement that that isn't going to happen to Atom". Only time will tell.

Regardless, and on hindsight I'm not sure why I fooled myself, I really thought Dave Winer would have taken the high road this time.

The 'anti-Atom FUD' has been coming in pretttty thick lately on Scripting News.

You don't hear Brent Simmons complaining about Atom... and he's got an RSS^H^H^Hnews aggregator product that he's decided to support Atom with. And Brent's on the RSS advisory board! Brent is smart. Brent doesn't pick fights. He is a listener and an enabler. He does what his users ask for. (We love you for it Brent!) Even if Brent was wealthy I still don't think he'd piss people off like that, even if he did have things against Atom. I don't think he looks at Atom negatively anyway, based on his comments on his weblog. If he does he does a great job hiding it.

Yahoo added support for Atom in 30 minutes. I don't see what the big deal is. Dave was harping on open formats in his talk at Microsoft. Why should there only be one open format? Why should dissatisfied people not be encouraged to innovate? Competition is good, intra-format and inter-format. Let it be. May the best format (and team) win.