To ensure more diversity in the middle layers, EvoArch suggests designing protocols that are largely non-overlapping in terms of services and functionality so that they do not compete with each other. The model suggests that protocols overlapping more than 70 percent of their functions start competing with each other.
When new protocols compete
I think one way of reading this would be to say that HTTP replaced FTP because it did at least 70% of what FTP did. And in order to compete/replace HTTP, something is going to need to do at least 70% of it—and presumably in some better fashion before it too will be replaced.
It would be interesting to think of this in an HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2.0, HTTP-over-QUIC framing. Will HTTP/1.1 eventually be replaced?
