1. There are only really 4 versions of RSS, and Winer wrote two of them. There were 3 different groups involved, which was the problem - the problem isn't having newer versions.

2. You could say the same of Mark Pilgrim's social problems. He is very difficult to get along with, is very arrogant and lead a crusade against Winer for years. He on one hand argued that RSS was fragmented and incompatible, but his solution to that was to start yet another syndication format.

You are forgetting that what made syndication popular was the simplicity of RSS. There were other formats before it, and there have been formats since - but the ease of implementation and simplicity of RSS ushered in a whole new era of services and nothing less than blogging itself, podcasting and all the services since that have built on that foundation (ie. 'the social web').