[linuxftw]

'just use HTTP proxying' would require having another HTTP server. That second HTTP server would need to implement an abstraction similar of SCGI/FCGI itself, or you'd need to move the sharding into the former HTTP server to distribute the work across several backend HTTP servers.

[sippingjippers]

They've all had this almost since basically prehistory (e.g. mod_proxy_lb). The process management bit not so much, but having a web server manage app server processes, that's an abstraction I could live without