Edward Jaffe wrote: > This line of discussion is tangential at best. Open source is *not* a > requirement for conformance of any operating system or application > component to open standards. For example, the use of TCP/IP networking > is considered "open". There is no requirement that the source code for > the TCP/IP stack itself be made available. > > This paper may be of interest: http://www.csrstds.com/openstds.html. >
while that may be strictly true... one of the things that helped TCP/IP prevail was the availability of source implementations. strictly speaking, one of the things that differentiated IETF standards from ISO standards was that IETF required two or more interoperable implementations as part of the standardization process (while this didn't mandate availability of source ... source availability could sure help). In the late 80s thru the early 90s ... multiple organizations had specified eliminating tcp/ip and required conversion to ISO OSI implementations ... including the federal gov. with GOSIP. At an "official" level, a major differentiation between IETF and ISO was the requirement for not only some implementation (before final passing as a standard) but two or more interoperable implementations (i.e. a standard could pass in ISO w/o there ever being any implementations). the mainframe tcp/ip product stack had been done in vs/pascal. however, there were a very large number of platforms that deployed BSD tcp/ip stack implementation written in C ... i.e. sometimes being an open standard isn't sufficient for it to become widely adopted ... but ready availability of source implementation can significantly improve wide adoption. An open standard process may not require or mandate open source (just interoperable implementations) ... but ready availability of source can significantly improve uptake/adoption. within standards process, this may sometimes be recognized with a readily available "reference model" implementation. even then open source may not be an absolute requirement ... other than readily available source for portable implementation that can be used by lots of different organizations at least for development and testing. a lot of times, organizations with proprietary device drivers aren't attempting to address wide portability and adoption .. just some sort of competitive advantage for their specific hardware product. these organizations will typical strictly control the portability and where their product may be operational/available. they may even consider portability across a wide-range of different environments not an interesting market consideration (and/or they've been trade-off decision regarding wide portability vis-a-vis competitive advantage). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
