Wow! I’m listening to Chris Pirillo’s audio stream from Gnomedex. I am hearing some really great stuff. Microsoft’s Dean Hachamovitch showed IE 7. And he also discussed Microsoft overall engagement in RSS. As of 12:00 PST, Microsoft will be posting (on their website) a number of proposed extensions to the RSS specification. And Microsoft is releasing these “extensions” under a Creative Commons Attribution license. This is fabulous! Of course, we need to start seeing Microsoft products with RSS enablement. And we will need to see who endorses and adopts Microsoft’s extensions. But by releasing these extensions under a Creative Commons Attribution License, Microsoft has taken a huge first step in “inviting” everyone else to participate.
During Q&A, it was clear that some audience participants were not terribly happy with Microsoft. But I think much of their concern is historical rather than real. One of the audience members asked which “community process” would be used to enhance and extend these RSS extensions. Scoble jumped in and offered a Channel 9 wiki as the means to start the dialog. What impresses me with this is the fact that Microsoft was discussing and working _with_ the audience in real-time.
Gosh, this whole “community thing” might actually work. Let’s all drop the “Borg” talk and move on. If our industry can allow IBM to become a principal open source provider, then we can certainly allow Microsoft the opportunity to join in community processes to extend RSS. Let’s think of the industry as a neighborhood. Just because the folks on the corner didn’t participate in last year’s BBQ doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invite them to the party this year.. After all, Microsoft will be able to bring a lot of good stuff to this year’s event. 😉
I’m psyched. This just confirms some of the wonderful things that I heard at the Technology Summit back in the spring.
-CyclingRoo-