A quality of service (QOS) framework for mediating needs of software applications in the context of an application framework with capabilities of a network host platform in response to a service request from the software application. The QOS framework includes a QOS knowledge base and rules module including a specialized set of system wide rules for dynamically changing QOS behavior in response to the service request. The QOS framework also includes QOS framework service modules for negotiating between the software application and the network host platform based on the specialized set of system wide rules included in the QOS knowledge base and rules module. In addition, the QOS framework includes a plurality of QOS application platform interfaces (APIs) for interconnecting the QOS framework service modules with the QOS knowledge base and rules module, and a plurality of APIs for connecting the application with the QOS framework service modules and with the network host platform.