I was driving to the airport with Lauren, whom some of you will know, she's technical but hasn't been following Atom. I explained the debate we are having over the required-ness of <atom:summary>, and she said "Don't you have anything better to talk about?" I suspect she has a point. Suppose we leave it the way it is... people who don't want to include a summary can use <summary/>, so it's just silly to say that there's an example of a current feed that would be ruled out. For that matter, Graham's body-only feeds can be done with <title/>. I can see Sam's arguments, but on the other hand, the errors that might get caught by requiring summary are probably boring corner-cases anyhow.
Which is to say, it doesn't matter very much.
Which is to say, Paul & I are gonna watch a little more debate and then we'll call rough consensus one way or the other, at which point I at least will become crushingly rude to anyone who wants to invest more time in this. -Tim