One of the discussions going round the web over the past couple of days has been a discussion on the wordpress trac about dropping RSS0.92 and 1.0 support from future versions as they are seen as redundant.
Dropping RSS 0.92 support seems sensible. It’s an old format and there are considerable advantages to using a more recent, better developed standard. RSS 1.0, on the other hand, brings to the table a number of advantages lacking in its higher-numbered cousin.
Harry Chen provides three good reasons for sticking with RSS 1.0 support, reasons that are well worth seconding. Atom opens up a lot of semantic web possibilities—particularly thanks to work to model it as a microformat and in OWL—but RSS 2.0 certainly doesn’t offer the scope and power to justify replacing 1.0.
Naturally if WordPress were to drop support it’d be a simple matter to hack it back in, but in these days of structured blogging, web 2.0 and related buzzwords, it’s definitely preferable to have publishing tools that prefer technologically superior solutions.