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Re: bettering open source involvement

2016-08-01 17:24:16
"Eggert, Lars" wrote:

What if, in some future state, a given working group had a code
repository and the working group was chartered not just with
developing the standards but maintaining implementations of the code?

as an addition to developing specs, that might be useful, if the spec
remains the canonical standards output.

"Go read the code" is not a useful answer if the code comes under a
license (such as GPL) that taints the developer. (This is a major
reason what we are doing IETF specs for DCTCP and CUBIC - so that they
can be implemented without needing to read Linux kernel code.)

Source code, regardless of license, should never serve as the
specification of any protocol or algorithm. A spec must be expressed in
prose, tables, formulas, pseudocode, flowcharts, ABNF, what have you,
not in actual code in an actual programming language.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org