(Welcome readers of Simon Phipps in SunMink! If you want to take BlogBridge for a spin, click here!)

We’ve put a lot of effort into ensuring that BlogBridge plays nicely with others. As far as I am concerned, if an OPML file created by BlogBridge can’t be read by another application, that’s a BlogBridge bug. And if BlogBridge can’t read the file from another application, that’s still BlogBridge’s bug.

Simon Phipps uses the roach motel analogy, “roaches check in but they can’t check out”. Marc Cantor used a more colorful expression (which could have been even more colorful but would I think have become R-rated) - “if you suck then you also have to spit.”

(By the way Simon said, about BlogBridge: “… I just moved my blog subscriptions from Bloglines to BlogBridge to give it a try (it’s a pretty cool Java Webstart application) using the OPML export in Bloglines, and I work with a group of people routinely exchanging documents between a selection of applications that support ODF.” — Thanks for the mention, Simon!)

Certainly us application developers need to respect people’s desire to try our software without becoming locked in, which means supporting both the import and the export of data in the most flexible and reliable way.

With BlogBridge it goes even further, because we also use OPML as the format for subscribing to and publishing reading lists. And the new BlogBridge:Library (as David Weinberger said) “inhales and exhales” OPML. Any folder in BBL automatically has an OPML feed. And if you have an OPML feed from somewhere, you can have BBL turn it into a (dynamically updated) folder.

So for us, the OPML standard is a total godsend. It provides a degree of interoperability that is quite amazing without which I am sure we wouldn’t have the success we’ve had so far.