I'd also say a large part of its issue is lack of internal consistency of the format itself. Firstly there are the various official RSS versions, then there are all those Atom things and probably others as well, and then there's the thing about how you're supposed to render the things correctly. XML as the content format is also pretty much antiquated.
A modern format would no doubt have to be JSON- or YAML-based and have its human-readable content in plain text or markdown, so it'd have to be pretty much readable with a plain text http client, like curl.
So, just let RSS die the slow death it's been going through for good reasons and bring something consistent and straight-forward into its place. Something that you could easily generate and parse from any modern language without specific libraries.
Bringing RSS back is like trying to bring SOAP as a RPC system back; it just won't fly anymore no matter how much hot air you try to pump into it. We know better now and have better ways to do the things.
A modern format would no doubt have to be JSON- or YAML-based and have its human-readable content in plain text or markdown, so it'd have to be pretty much readable with a plain text http client, like curl.
So, just let RSS die the slow death it's been going through for good reasons and bring something consistent and straight-forward into its place. Something that you could easily generate and parse from any modern language without specific libraries.
Bringing RSS back is like trying to bring SOAP as a RPC system back; it just won't fly anymore no matter how much hot air you try to pump into it. We know better now and have better ways to do the things.