When I initially released quickSub, back in July of last year, there were to drivers behind the project:
1. Provide a mechanism by which to alleviate the end-user from the current issued faced by content providers for offering a consistent subscription interface
2. Generate sufficient stimulus within the development community to drive convergence on a standardized subscription model for newsreaders and aggregators.
Driver one seems to have been reasonably successful. quickSub is now in use at a number of major blog-related sites, and used across a range of individual blogs.
Driver two seems to still be a sticking point. In a way, the day quickSub has been successful on the second point is the day I lay the project to rest. In recent months there has been some activity focused around a ‘feed’ URI scheme. This has been adopted by a few of the more popular aggregators and newsreaders, and allows one-click subscription. However, it doesn’t really provide a solution for the web-based aggregators (Bloglines, myFeedster et. al.), for whom a URI scheme-based solution would require the deployment of a subscription agent on the end user’s machine.