Mark Baker announced on www-dist-app an effort to investigate future work to be done on HTTP.

Explaining that the group, mostly WAPforum participants, felt that there was a need for HTTP to do more to support the wireless community, Baker noted that participation from other communities was also desired. This is the first determined effort to reopen the work since the HTTP-NG activity.

The group have set up a mailing list called "http-futures", which can be joined by mailing "subscribe http-futures" to majordomo@bluescreen.org.

Baker writes that the aim of the http-futures group, after drawing up requirements and HTTP 1.1 issues, is:

Discussion of whether HTTP1.1 is:

a. Good enough as is, so leave it as is.

b. Almost good enough, with a few fixes, so reopen HTTP 1.1 to address the list of current shortcomings.

c. Launch a new effort for a major revision/redesign of HTTP. In this case, there are several options:

• Reviving HTTP-NG and pursue the standardization of something heavily based on it.
• Basing this new protocol on something else (BLOCKS comes to mind).