> I think the better question for you would be, what's the better way to develop network protocols like this, then? Assuming that purpose, I can't think of anything to criticize here except maybe they should have limited testing to beta and dev users of Chrome. However, that limits your test data and normally that sort of thing is done to make sure web compatibility isn't broken in the future by changing standards, and given that browsers already negotiate protocols, I don't see an imminent danger there.
As I mentioned in my reply to tptacek, I'm not intending to call out QUIC specifically here; the point is simply that open source and open standards are not equivalent. Shipping implementations is fine as long as there are effective safeguards to prevent lock-in.
What we have to make sure we avoid is something like the -webkit CSS prefix situation, where the fact that WebKit was open source did nothing to prevent the mobile Web from very nearly coming to depend on all the quirks of a big pile of C++. (That situation is also an example of standardization leading to better outcomes—remember how bad the WebKit-specific "-webkit-gradient(linear, color-stop(foo), ...)" syntax was?)
As I mentioned in my reply to tptacek, I'm not intending to call out QUIC specifically here; the point is simply that open source and open standards are not equivalent. Shipping implementations is fine as long as there are effective safeguards to prevent lock-in.
What we have to make sure we avoid is something like the -webkit CSS prefix situation, where the fact that WebKit was open source did nothing to prevent the mobile Web from very nearly coming to depend on all the quirks of a big pile of C++. (That situation is also an example of standardization leading to better outcomes—remember how bad the WebKit-specific "-webkit-gradient(linear, color-stop(foo), ...)" syntax was?)