Community
Byline is an open specification developed in public. Everyone is welcome to contribute.
Origin
Byline was created by Terry Godier, an indie iOS developer building Current, an RSS reader designed around the river-of-news philosophy. The spec grew out of a problem Current kept running into: when a personal blog, a corporate press release, and a satirical newsletter arrive in the same feed list, they look identical. Readers lose the context that made them subscribe in the first place. I started calling this content collapse, and Byline is an attempt to fix it at the feed level.
Get Involved
Implementations
Feed readers and publishers supporting Byline.
No implementations yet. The spec is seeking early feedback from feed reader and podcast app developers.
Related Projects
Byline builds on and complements these existing projects and standards.
Podcast Namespace
RSS namespace extensions for podcasting
JSON Feed
A simpler, JSON-based feed format
nownownow.com
The /now page movement by Derek Sivers
uses.tech
A directory of /uses pages
IndieWeb
People-focused alternative to the corporate web
rel=me
Distributed identity verification
Microformats
Simple data markup for humans
Contributing
We welcome contributions of all kinds:
- • Feedback on the specification
- • Bug reports and suggestions
- • Implementations in any language
- • Documentation improvements
- • Example feeds
Open an issue on GitHub to get started.
Feedback
Byline is in active development and seeking feedback from feed reader developers, publishers, and anyone who cares about the open web. If you'd like to review the spec, email Terry or open a discussion on GitHub.
License
The Byline specification is released under CC0 1.0 Universal. You are free to use, adapt, and build upon this work without restriction or attribution.
Byline is an independent specification. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the RSS Advisory Board, IETF, JSON Feed authors, or any standards body.