inquiry re. the state of protocol R&D

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Hi Folks,

For a while, it's been kind of bugging me that the Internet ecosystem is increasingly a world of API's tied to proprietary systems - quite different than the world of interoperable protocols. Sure, every once in a while something new comes along - like RSS and XMPP, but that's more at the fringes - and in a lot of cases we see attempts at things by folks who really don't have a clue (open social comes to mind). (And, of course, very specific things like, say DMARC.)

Obviously, a lot of this is driven by commercial factors - there's money to be made in centralizing systems and monetizing APIs; not so much for protocols. And it seems like there isn't a lot of R&D funding for such things.

Which leads me to wonder - is there much of a protocol r&d community left - academic or otherwise? IRTF seems awfully narrowly focused - and mostly at lower layers of the protocol stack. Where's the work on application protocols (beyond refinements to HTTP, and web service stuff)? Are there still funders for this kind of work?

If so, where do folks "congregate?" For programming languages, there's http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/, conferences like OOPSLA, and there seems to be a steady stream of academic papers. Is there anything left like that for protocol R&D?

Miles Fidelman

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra





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