As such, any protocol specification this article may reference is likely inaccurate and/or incomplete.

No security or authentication is provided by the protocol specification.

However, Microsoft finally released the protocol specification in February 2008.

No copies of the original interim protocol specification or its software exist.

The result of this effort was an open protocol specification, which is publicly available.

Ok, I understand, tech journalists may not understand the difference between "lines of code" and protocol specifications.

Proprietors may enforce restrictions through patents and by keeping the protocol specification a trade secret.

The hierarchical case is somewhat more complex; see the various protocol specifications.

Some of these protocol specifications were open for everyone to implement, and others were vendor-proprietary solutions.

Recently, however, Apple has begun to license the protocol specification for commercial implementations.