Johan - glad you chimed in!

I'm all in favor of keeping a low level interface and don't have an
issue with Network.Socket existing,  I additionally really like the
suggestion of moving from the ML to a wiki in the same style as
Haskell'.

I'll port these comments to the wiki if that is whats agreed on and
hold off on other thoughts for now.

* Avoiding a 'heavy weight' solution for socket state might get ugly
fast with all the 'Either a b' results that we'll need - also a socket
can close at any time so a socket in 'Connected' state might not
actually be connected.  I understand the attraction to a light
solution using existential types but Tim Sheard sketched for me a
reasonable alternative which I invite him to restate here, if he has
the time.