The OPML saga all started with Radio UserLand, a client-side blogging software package from UserLand Software which included an RSS aggregator, outliner, and scripting language. Since then, a lot of progress has been made.

Userland was originally created by Dave Winer, the creator and maintainer of OPML.org. Dave is also well known for his blog, Scripting News, along with being knowm for convincing The New York Times to adapt RSS for it’s online version.

In October 2005, Dave Winer put out a request to the community to design an elegant OPML icon. While several options were presented, none have gained traction. During our quest for an icon during an OPML related project called TagJag, we realized we needed to develop our own, which can be seen here:

http://www.opmlicons.com

We encourage you all to take this icon and spread it around the community and to use it for your own projects. Certainly feel free to create your own derivatives as well. The only thing we request is that you release your creation under the same share-alike license to the community.

View the original Dave Winer post:
http://www.opml.org/2005/10/30#a111

View Chris Pirillo’s post from Gnomedex:
http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/06/30/opml-icon/

We will be posting alternate designs that have been proposed shortly. We hope that this can be the catalyst that gets the community talking about a standard icon. Hopefully, as the standard develops we will replace it with the one that becomes publicly accepted if this is not selected.