"Eric Burger" <eburger(_at_)bea(_dot_)com> writes:
One interesting side effect of the existence of an open source
implementation of a protocol is monoculture. We ran into a problem in
ifax year ago when it turned out that all eight "independent"
implementations all relied on the same library, thus rendering the
"independent" implementations label difficult, to say the least. Why
were there no independent implementations? Because in this case, the
open source implementation was pretty good, and it was not worth
investing in a proprietary implementation. The result here has a really
bad side effect for the IETF: if there is a good open source, free
implementation, there will be no second implementation, resulting in it
being impossible for the standard to progress.
But that is how it is supposed to work! If there is only one
implementation, a standard is not mature enough to move to DS. You need
to have at least two, preferably several more, completely independent
implementations in order to quality-test a standard.
/Simon
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