[Someone]

"There's SOAP, but nobody really cares or wants to use it anymore."

Do you know why? What makes you think we won't end up at

"There's OneAPItoRuleThemAll, but nobody really cares or wants to use it anymore."

or even at

"There's OneAPItoRuleThemAll, but nobody really cares or wants to use it."

If you cannot answer that, I wouldn't bother working on something like this.

Also, who do you think will be interested in having a common protocol? I think the answer will be "those with little data of their own". Big players do not want you to build tools that work together with 'their' data (clear example: Twitter: open while small, but now closing down its API)

[evv]

> Also, who do you think will be interested in having a common protocol? I think the answer will be "those with little data of their own". Big players do not want you to build tools that work together with 'their' data (clear example: Twitter: open while small, but now closing down its API)

This is some scary logic. By that logic, why would great open protocols like HTTP or email have ever gained popularity over proprietary solutions? Do you really think those two protocols are the only perfect and final solutions which will win?

Couldn't you at least try to have a democratic mindset? This is the web, how do you think Twitter ever came to "own" all that data in the first place?

[Someone]

HTML? By having many small players, plus by virtue of the US department of Justice.

E-mail? By having many small players, or at least not one player able to call the shots.

Even today, many parties try to make carve out their own communication kingdoms. Examples: BlackBerry, MS Exchange, Apple's iMessage and FaceTime, GMail (doesn't do push email anymore via Exchange emulation)

And yes, HTTP is open, as is TCP/IP. That, IMO, is because of two things: lower layers get commoditized and network effects. Even disregarding the latter, there is too little money to make in such low-level stuff (that also is why Apple builds on BSD and Google on Linux, and both use OpenGL.)

And that democratic mindset? I tried to make an observation, not to tell you what I thought the world should look like.