Subject: Re: bettering open source involvement

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2016 15:23:56 -0700

"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