what are the real problems

[Randy Bush]

> - will competition in the marketplace between multiple protocols
>   result in feature refinement?

more to the point, will competition in the marketplace between
*companies' marketing departments* obscure and over-ride the
differences in technical quality and longevity of the protocols?

> when a vendor tries to push its own protocol or protocol variant
> often it seems to me that the goal is to limit consumer choice.

bingo!

randy