FPWD: PubSub

PubSub

https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/WD-pubsub-20161020/

Abstract


An open, simple, web-scale and decentralized pubsub protocol. Anybody can play.

As opposed to more developed (and more complex) pubsub specs like Jabber Publish-Subscribe [XEP-0060] this spec's base profile (the barrier-to-entry to speak it) is dead simple. The fancy bits required for high-volume publishers and subscribers are optional. The base profile is HTTP-based, as opposed to XMPP (see more on this below).

To dramatically simplify this spec in several places where we had to choose between supporting A or B, we took it upon ourselves to say "only A", rather than making it an implementation decision.

We offer this spec in hopes that it fills a need or at least advances the state of the discussion in the pubsub space. Polling is extremely wasteful and high latency. We think a decentralized pubsub layer is a fundamental, missing layer in the Internet architecture today and its existence, more than just enabling the obvious lower latency feed readers, would enable many cool applications, most of which we can't even imagine. But we're looking forward to decentralized social networking.

Status of the Document


This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.

This document is currently an editor's draft. Current bugs and issues are managed in GitHub.

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This document is governed by the 1 September 2015 W3C Process Document.