Comment by loo

> When is/was HTTP ever really extended?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields

Only a few of those existed in the 1.0 spec. The rest evolved in practice. You can add your own without asking anyone else. Libraries don't have to be changed. Your payloads are your business. Encodings are flexible and negotiable.

> i think HTTP only really won because of those.

It's proven to be a predictable, stable, extensible, compatible, generic information exchange protocol. If it's won, it's because of that.