In a move likely to take RSS quickly into the mainstream, Microsoft will integrate the syndication standard into Longhorn, the next version of its Windows operating system, it announced today at Gnomedex, Business Week reports. In the meantime Microsoft will make RSS feeds readable from within its Internet Explorer browser. RSS subscribers will be able to read those feeds in a test version of the browser, available later this summer.
Until now, users have had to usually cut-and-paste URLs into RSS readers to subscribe to services. Uncharacteristically, the software giant will be offering RSS capability for free, using the Creative Commons license.
That would allow software developers to freely create programs based on Microsoft's technology so long as they provide proper attribution. The result would likely be a proliferation of software that takes advantage of RSS for a wide variety of applications.
Some sort of announcement today by the software giant regarding RSS was widely anticipated, but the available details had been sketchy.
