Sadly, the article glosses over what a mess RSS 2.0 was. There were actually three different, slightly incompatible releases of 2.0. It's not really relevant anymore because so many years have passed, but it used to be that in order to parse an RSS 2.0 feed, you'd have to know when the feed was created and parse it differently depending on the creation time.
I read a post about the contentious history of RSS several years ago, similar to this one, and that bit really jumped out at me. I'll see if I can find it again.
I read a post about the contentious history of RSS several years ago, similar to this one, and that bit really jumped out at me. I'll see if I can find it again.
Edit: Somebody else posted it here already. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18004137