NetNewsWire Status

Simon Willison's Blog News
open-source rss-reader netnewswire brent-simmons retirement software

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Simon Willison highlights Brent Simmons' retirement project: making NetNewsWire, an open-source RSS reader, exceptionally good without commercial pressure.

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Cached at: 06/17/26, 07:36 AM

# NetNewsWire Status Source: [https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/17/netnewswire-status/](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/17/netnewswire-status/) 17th June 2026 \- Link Blog **[NetNewsWire Status](https://inessential.com/2026/06/15/netnewswire-status.html)**\([via](https://lobste.rs/s/0mximk/netnewswire_status)\) I find this inspiring\. Brent Simmons retired a year ago, and his retirement project is making one piece of software really,*really*good \- free from any commercial pressure\. The software is[NetNewsWire](https://netnewswire.com/)\- "it's like podcasts, but for*reading*" \- first released in 2002 and[made open source](https://netnewswire.com/history.html)in 2018\. I've been using it on Mac and iPhone for several years now and I'm finding it indispensable\. Posted[17th June 2026](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/17/)at 3:36 am ## Recent articles - [Publishing WASM wheels to PyPI for use with Pyodide](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/13/publishing-wasm-wheels/)\- 13th June 2026 - [Claude Fable is relentlessly proactive](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/11/fable-is-relentlessly-proactive/)\- 11th June 2026 - [Initial impressions of Claude Fable 5](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/9/claude-fable-5/)\- 9th June 2026 This is a**link post**by Simon Willison, posted on[17th June 2026](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/17/)\. [brent\-simmons4](https://simonwillison.net/tags/brent-simmons/)[netnewswire6](https://simonwillison.net/tags/netnewswire/)[open\-source308](https://simonwillison.net/tags/open-source/) ### Monthly briefing Sponsor me for**$10/month**and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments\. Pay me to send you less\! [Sponsor & subscribe](https://github.com/sponsors/simonw/)

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