*it seems to have been uncommon until recently for internet protocols to come fr...

it seems to have been uncommon until recently for internet protocols to come from vendors

Sorry, that's been going on for quite a while now. Cases in point: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3768 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5077 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2637 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2281 (these are just examples, there are many more citing Cisco, Microsoft, Nokia, Google, etc.)