>However, in those discussions, a related concern was identified; confusion between QUIC-the-transport-protocol, and QUIC-the-HTTP-binding. I and others have seen a number of folks not closely involved in this work conflating the two, even though they're now separate things.

>

>To address this, I'd like to suggest that -- after coordination with the HTTP WG -- we rename our the HTTP document to "HTTP/3", and using the final ALPN token "h3". Doing so clearly identifies it as another binding of HTTP semantics to the wire protocol -- just as HTTP/2 did -- so people understand its separation from QUIC.

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/quic/RLRs4nB1lwFCZ_7k0...

TL;DR the rename is to resolve the confusion.

why not just http/quic? using 3 seems strongly suggest that it is the next generation of http. They knew that but pretend it is not relavent.

Because there's a decent chance that it will be the next generation of HTTP.

If it doesn't pan out they'll just move on. Remember IPv5?

Aha, thanks for clearing that up

Google didn't make the distinction between transport layer and HTTP-layer on top when they called their development "QUIC", it was one thing. IETF decided to split these during the standardization.

Smart decision, because QUIC as transport layer could be good for other protocols built on top of it.

But hey who knows, SCTP never took of but we are talking about google here