At 04:48 PM 10/29/2007, Simon Josefsson wrote:
"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.
but why does one or both have to be open source?
Why can't both be commercial?
So few PSs become DSs, I believe this will almost certainly make
progression from PS to DS slower. Is that what we want?
I admit now all PSs have IPR attached, but this is almost certainly
intended to kill any IPR from achieving DS. Is that what is intended here?
/Simon
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