Dave Winer thinks Atom is uneccessary, because users don’t care about the subtle nuances between RSS 2.0 and Atom.
While the Atom vs. Dave Winer saga makes for good soap opera, Dave is correct that users don’t care. The fact that there are two formats doing nearly the same thing is regrettable, but it can be laid pretty conclusively on Winer.
Dave is correct that end users don’t care about formats. But developers, who are also users (of formats and APIs) care a lot. They have to navigate the difficult morass to bring the end users the apps they want.
As a blogger and feed user, I do care about formats. The fact that RSS 2.0. can’t reliably handle HTML markup in post titles, while Atom can, is a good example. If I have a choice, I prefer an Atom feed over RSS 2.0 (or Feedburner feeds, which handles the complexity for me).
One of Dave’s mottoes is “Users and developers, partying together”. Pity he makes it hard for the developers to do just that.