it became apparent to me why ASP.Net went with an event-based model (which Continuity reminds me of). Of course event-based models depend on a proper server-side DOM. Server-side DOM (such as ASP.Net has) is complicated and does not seem to be very popular.
Any project of this kind is, as perrin put it, "not to be taken lightly." Along similar lines, I would also like to see a Perl SMTP server (that also does not depend on Apache httpd). A topic for another thread I suppose.