As an aside: Reuters pushed for an open syndication standard--NewsML--back in 2001 (http://about.reuters.com/newsml/). It's become a standard endorsed by the International Press Telecommunications Council.
ATG's Droplets were way nicer than the EJBs that everyone else was using, but the writing was on the wall for them... JBoss is only just now catching up to what ATG had back then.