Agreed.
Incremental, evolutionary changes rolled out on a shorter time frame seems a much safer development course. If there is a reason to couple API changes to the build system to the network protocol, I haven't seen it.
After seeing comments from Micheal Harbler and Valerio De Carolis, I am still quite concerned about the choice of DDS. At issue is responsiveness, vitality, community. A perusal of the DDS code repositories show that the are almost stagnant, with OSRF already being the single largest contributor to them. This belies the idea of leaving "networking to the experts": if OSRF becomes the principle user and lead maintainer for DDS, then its not leveraging a community of knowledgeable experts. It could be a manpower sink, rather than a benefit.
The dig w.r.t corba is real: perhaps it took a few decades for corba to become usable; the fact remains its not much used (I feel responsible for the one exception: having goaded the gimp/gtk/gnome foundation into using it 15-20 years ago, for which I am sincerely sorry. ).
Its important to understand why this is the case: its because OMG does not use a community process or an RFC-style process. This is why its products are moribund. Compare this to the vitality seen in the IETF, or, closer to home, the zeromq RFC process. The community process has worked well over these decades; abandoning it for a core technology component seems foolhardy.
-- Linas