David Galbraith says "RSS, or more generally, web based syndication, appears to be hitting critical mass but, where is the money?
He goes on to say that "...no large publisher will syndicate their full content in RSS because they would lose traffic and therefore, money."
He's mostly right. It is probably true that no large publisher (I'd extend that to any publisher looking to make money) is going to syndicate their full content in RSS. But, the blame shouldn't be laid at the foot of RSS however. RSS is just a container. People need to look a little bit harder at what goes into the container and how it gets there.
Comic strips are syndicated, the people that produce them make money. Real estate listings are syndicated, the people that originate them make money. Television shows are syndicated and the people that produce them make money. There's also money in it for the licensee's as well.
The reason why no one that is seriously interested in making money from syndicated content should choose RSS is because 99% of the tools that produce RSS don't do it in a way that encourages economic transactions to occur. Most tool providers (I say most because Blogware and presumably a few others didn't go this route) have implemented policy into their content management applications and that policy dictates that it is damned hard, if not impossible, to make a buck syndicating content using RSS.