This looks interesting, a proposal from Roy Fielding to set up a new Apache project:

The Web Architecture Lab would be a work area for specifying and experimenting with the interrelated shared agreements (protocols) that make the World Wide Web a happy place. The goal is to produce a central storage for Web protocol evolution, including both existing Web protocols and new ones, that Apache developers can refer to, comment on, prototype alternatives, and provide examples and test cases.

Historically the development of the web has been split between the IETF and the W3C with some mixed results, most notably the confusion over registration of media types developed by the W3C. Is this the start of a unified web standardisation process?

Also, while perusing the Apache Labs page I came across Noggit a fast JSON streaming parser and serializer for Java.