RSS (Really Saddening Syndication, probably)

RSS is a terrible mess which is quite unnecessarily popular.

Representative of what a mess it is, you get to decide what it stands for!

• I’ve decided it stands for Really Saddening Syndication,
  because it makes me sad with how bad and how popular it is.
• Netscape’s RSS 0.9 (not yet a syndication format) said that RSS stood for RDF Site Summary,
  even though the root element’s qualified name was the only piece of RDF in it;
• Netscape’s RSS 0.91 (incompatible with 0.9), said that it stood for Rich Site Summary;
• UserLand’s RSS 0.91 (incompatible with even Netscape’s 0.91, despite claiming otherwise)
  said that it was just a name and stood for nothing at all just at present;
• RSS-DEV Working Group’s RSS 1.0 (incompatible with every other version)
  wanted it to be RDF Site Summary again and actually RDF this time;
• Consensus was building by the uncompleted release of UserLand’s RSS 0.93
  (incompatible with everything before it, of course); and
• By UserLand’s RSS 2.0 (incompatible with all previous versions and even itself)
  people settled on Really Simple Syndication.
  And to be honest, this is what all normal people will say these days.

See also Atom, far better designed and similarly popular for usage in most fields.
Also simpler to use correctly.