[ih] the state of protocol R&D?

[Miles Fidelman]

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).

Obviously, a lot of that 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?  Or funders?  And 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