Randy Ray has initiated the OpenRPC project to facilitate a "new approach" to XML-RPC.

Ray has been working on extensions and modifications to the XML-RPC protocol, and has created this new list to prevent any confusion arising between UserLand's stable XML-RPC spec, and his new initiative. He writes:

... the best approach is to remove as much ambiguity as possible, and present an effort that is as distinctly separate from XML-RPC as it can be expressed, when the underlying intent is still to be as close to 100% compatible as is possible.

One of the aims of the project is to separate the areas of the protocol -- transport, encoding and interoperability -- in order to separate the effects of one on the other. Ray writes that we would like to see not just HTTP support (as encapsulated in XML-RPC) but SMTP, raw TCP/IP and emergent protocols such as BXXP.