Here’s what I think is a fascinating read. I’m excited about QUIC, and less excited that well-intentioned (sometimes draconian) protocol enforcement encourages software engineers to move nearly all protocols to run on top of HTTP or HTTPS — as a way to bypass the enforcement.
When a protocol can’t evolve because deployments ‘freeze’ its extensibility points, we say it has ossified. TCP itself is a severe example of ossification; so many middleboxes do so many things to TCP — whether it’s blocking packets with TCP options that aren’t recognized, or ‘optimizing’ congestion control.
It’s necessary to prevent ossification, to ensure that protocols can evolve to meet the needs of the Internet in the future; otherwise, it would be a ‘tragedy of the commons’ where the actions of some individual networks — although well-intended — would affect the health of the Internet overall.