I would absolutely argue that websockets is a terrible protocol as well, and the only justification for it that I can see is that it was created as a hack on to

I would absolutely argue that websockets is a terrible protocol as well, and the only justification for it that I can see is that it was created as a hack on top of HTTP. It's certainly not the model of an ideal protocol design or the correct way to design things from scratch. I also think it is perfectly fine to have a reference implementation without a formal specification in many cases, and I don't think specification-first necessarily leads to a better protocol. As you point out, CORBA is certainly horrible as well. Just because no one has replaced dbus it isn't good enough. The ever-appearing mantra of "if you don't like it, write your own" is boring. It is perfectly reasonable to point out what is wrong with a protocol in wide(ning) use without immediately presenting a fully formed alternative. It could be that most people have more pressing concerns than individually fighting Red Hat and all the projects invested in dbus for control over Linux userspace. There is no dichotomy here, the only choices are not silently accepting the protocols we have or "paying a bunch of committee people". I don't think you're seriously proposing that anyone could just step in and redesign dbus from within the existing project structure at this point. Any changes would be fought tooth and nail by the people invested in it right now. Any replacement would necessarily be a completely separate project, and it would have extremely slim prospects of succeeding. It's not surprising that people aren't doing that, even though dbus is flawed. We are stuck with a lot of terrible things. The only way any of them will be fixed is for enough people to get angry enough to do something about it.