Reference implementation: Difference between revisions

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# Helps to clarify the intent of the specification in situations where [[Conformance testing|conformance tests]] are inadequate<ref>Curran, Patrick (2003). ''Conformance Testing: An Industry Perspective''. Sun Microsystems. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120303000051/http://vote.nist.gov/speeches/1%20-%20Specification%20Panel/6%20-%20Curran.pdf]</ref>}}

Reference implementations of algorithms, for instance [[cryptographic algorithm]]s, are often the result or the input of [[standardization]] processes. In this function they are often dedicated to the [[public ___domain]] with their [[source code]] as [[public ___domain software]]. Examples are the first [[CERN HTTPd|CERN's httpd]]<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20140817185526/http://home.web.cern.ch/topics/birth-web/licensing-web The birth of the web Licensing the web] on cern.ch (2014)</ref> in 1993, [[Serpent (cipher)|Serpent]] cipher in 1999, and several [[base64]] variants<ref>[http://libb64.sourceforge.net/ libb64] on sourceforge</ref>, and [[SHA-3]].<ref>[http://keccak.noekeon.org/KeccakReferenceAndOptimized-3.2.zip KeccakReferenceAndOptimized-3.2.zip] mainReference.c ''"The Keccak sponge function, designed by Guido Bertoni, Joan Daemen, Michaël Peeters and Gilles Van Assche. For more information, feedback or questions, please refer to our website: http://keccak.noekeon.org/Implementation by the designers, hereby denoted as "the implementer". To the extent possible under law, the implementer has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to the source code in this file. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/"''</ref> The [[Openwall Project]] maintains a list of several algorithms andwith their reference [[source code]] in the public ___domain.<ref>[http://openwall.info/wiki/people/solar/software/public-___domain-source-code Source code snippets and frameworks placed in the public ___domain] on [[Openwall Project|openwall.info]]</ref>

A reference implementation may or may not be production quality. For example, the [[Fraunhofer Society|Fraunhofer]] reference implementation of the [[MP3]] standard usually does not compare favorably to other common implementations, such as [[LAME]], in listening tests that determine sound quality.{{fact|date=January 2012}}