"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