These days when someone (a person, a company, a standards body...) talks about a simple protocol to do something I get suspicious that what they actually mean is an overly-simplified protocol to do that thing where, if successful, it will be the backbone of that domain in 20 years and also a horrible mess full of hacks necessary to work around its initial oversimplifications. See also: SMTP. SNMP. SIP SIMPLE. SOAP. SASL. SPNEGO. SCEP. OAuth.