A number of programmers and industry figures have criticised Apple for their development of their own document type definitions (DTD) for RSS 2.0, without the proper participation from the RSS community. Apple has been using XML DTD for its RSS 2.0 in iTunes 4.9. It has been alleged that Apple has copied existing elements of RSS 2.0, and has then tried to pass this off as its own product.
In a recent posting to the Real Simple Syndication Web site, the creator of the original RSS standard wrote, "I think it's kind of a bad idea to use a trademark in the name of a namespace. I think Apple may regret doing this. Also, their competitors, already objecting to the use of "pod" in the name of the category, may further object to supporting information with a trademark of a competitor as its name. Come on, Apple, we can do better."