Scripting News: "...so many people are using RSS the wrong way."

Dave knows this, and I think understand his angst exactly, but for you users out there, here's a secret about what makes the builders tick:

We hate it when you damned users don't use our stuff in the way we intended you to.

The guy that made the table knife hates it when you use it as a screwdriver.

The guy that made the screwdriver hates it when you use it to pry open paint cans.

The guy that made shopping carts hates it when you hop in them and ride them down hills.

And definitely, the guy that made RSS hates it when you use it in such a structured, serial, oh-so-totally-organized way.

Which is totally cool.

If I'd invented RSS, I'd hate the way you use it too. And that's because deep down inside, no matter how open our stuff is, we're control freaks that love watching users use our stuff within the boundaries of the limits we set forth.

And when you don't, no matter how pleasing the outcome, we're totally bugged out (and probably beaming from ear-to-ear) that someone isn't conforming to the rules that our little stupid little experiment tries its hardest to enforce.

Conform damyou!