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Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

358 points ofalkaed | 2 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
1. ggm ◴[12 Oct 25 02:36 UTC] No.45554680[source]▶
X.400 we're approaching it by stepwise refinement. It had X.500 which lives on as X.509 certificates and LDAP.

ISO/OSI had session layer. ie much of what QUIC does regarding underlying multiple transports.

Speaking of X.509 the s-expressions certificate format was more interesting in many ways.

replies(1): >>45555689 #
2. thequux ◴[12 Oct 25 06:08 UTC] No.45555689[source]▶
OSI's session layer did very little more than TCP/UDP port numbers; in the OSI model you would open a connection to a machine, then use that connection to open a session to a particular application.

X.400 was a nice idea, but the ideal of having a single global directory predates security. I can understand why it never happened

On X.509, the spec spends two chapters on attribute certificates, which I've never seen used in the wild. It's a shame; identity certificates do a terrible job at authentication