Reference implementation

In computing, a reference implementation is a software example of a standard for use in helping others implement their own versions of the standard. A standard is much easier to understand with a working example to hand.

The reference implementation may or may not be of production quality. The Fraunhofer reference implementation of MP3 is considered of lower encoding quality than many other implementations, such as LAME. However, the X.org reference implementation of the X Window System is not only ready for use, but is increasingly popular on open source Unix-like operating systems as-is.