"Windows Vista seems to be a veritable scandal magnet. After causing displeasures to several American organizations by dubbing its operating system Windows Vista and after the appearance of the first viruses for it, Microsoft has to deal now with charges related to the modification of the RSS technology.

The first protests showed up, on August 2, after Jane Kim, Program manager for RSS in Interner Explorer, announced on its blog that Microsoft will name RSS feeds Web Feeds.
A few days after this announcement, Google News has started to offer RSS formatted news, but the company used the same terminology: “feeds”.

Obviously, the format’s supporters and especially Dave Winer regarded Microsoft’s strategy as an attempt to change and to seize this technology. The RSS community’s vehement reaction forced Mike Torres, MSN Spaces lead program manager, to stand up for his company. He explained on his blog that Microsoft is not planning in any way to change the RSS technology, this being just a simple change of name.

On his blog, ‘Torres Talking’, Mike Torres announced that Internet Explorer 7.0 will implement a special feature based on RSS technology, and that the name of Web Feeds was chosen to differentiate classic RSS feeds from this new feature.

Torres supported his statement by saying that this is only a change in name and that there are also other companies, such as Newsgator and Firefox, using the name of “feeds” when referring to RSSs.

Microsoft’s interest in RSS is relatively recent, the company announcing in July that Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7.0 will have RSS support."

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First, "Windows Vista" hasn't been filed for trademark registration. I have never heard of anything being called "Windows Vista" so they would need to fabricate evidence to claim prior-art. Those organizations are simply looking for an excuse to sue Microsoft, there's nothing more to the story than that.

Second, those were NOT the first viruses for Windows Vista. Windows Vista Beta 1 did not ship with MSH (Microsoft Shell - Monad.) Because MSH was not shipped with Windows Vista, the viruses for MSH could NOT be called the first viruses for Windows Vista.

Third, those who are angered about Microsoft's decision to use the name "web feeds" are simply looking for a reason to cry. Dave Winer included, he helped create the method of applications pulling RSS feeds with media links in them - later called "podcasting." It is amazing how Apple can do it and he helps them, Microsoft does practically the same thing and gets shouted at for it. You have to love hypocrisy. If RSS' creator can help Microsoft integrate RSS support and to extend the original specification (which it was designed to do, by the way) then I don't see any reason for people to get their panties in a bunch.