2006 December 21

Microsoft RSS Patent Update: Manipulate, Maneuver and Morph

After reading this post and writing this one, I have more clarity on Microsoft’s approach with RSS since I just got done reading the whole patent (can you see my eyes glazing over?).

They’re NOT attempting to control the RSS protocol, but their patent is a platform play designed around controlling the RSS processes and paths in order to manipulate, maneuver and morph RSS itself. The operative and important paragraph is this one at the end:

[0150] The web content syndication platform described above can be utilized to manage, organize and make available for consumption content that is acquired from the Internet. The platform can acquire and organize web content, and make such content available for consumption by many different types of applications. These applications may or may not necessarily understand the particular syndication format. An application program interface (API) exposes an object model which allows applications and users to easily accomplish many different tasks such as creating, reading, updating, deleting feeds and the like. In addition, the platform can abstract away a particular feed format to provide a common format which promotes the useability of feed data that comes into the platform. Further, the platform processes and manages enclosures that might be received via a web feed in a manner that can make the enclosures available for consumption to both syndication-aware applications and applications that are not syndication-aware.

My “co-opting RSS” concern from the last post still stands and this is why…

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Microsoft to own RSS?

Some have predicted 2007 will be the "year of RSS". I view it as the "lubrication" for internet delivered content and it clearly is what enabled the podcasting phenomena to happen, was key to the rise of blogging and memetracking, and is vital for all of us to collect and aggregate the exponentially rising amount of information coming at us from every corner of the ‘net.

So what if Microsoft owned RSS and made everybody pay for the privilege to use it?

Reading Dave Winer’s blog just now I came across this post with some intrigue over questions of his involvement in RSS (which I won’t comment on since I don’t have any facts) but included a *very* disturbing link to a patent filed by Microsoft on RSS! So much for them hiring Ray Ozzie and ostensibly embracing the Web-centric ecosystem.

I just skimmed the patent and will read it in full tonight. At first glance it simply appears that they’re positioning it as a platform and all processes central to that RSS platform are within the patent itself. I expect that much smarter and more experienced corners of the internet are going to shout this one down. If not, 2007 will be the year RSS was co-opted and became yet another choke point for innovation owned by our pals in Redmond.