That's an awfully ambitious timetable for something that isn't even beta testing yet. Something this new will require years of testing to be done in a safe manner. Meanwhile the villagers gather to push forward the populist solution of larger and larger blocks.
Have you been following LN Development ? Rusty, Joseph Poon, and Thaddeus Dryja have been making some real progress.
Most Code is already ready and being tested as we speak:
https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightninghttps://github.com/hashplex/Lightninghttps://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/To be clear, 3rd quarter 2016 is when LN will
begin to roll out on the live network.
I'm worried that it seems the impetus is to cut it off before it can be established by the means with which it was originally intended to be reached - by running the software of your choice.
This has always been the case and continues to be the case . Core supports multiple implementations ... that is why they spend so much time fixing(lack of extensive modularity) Satoshi's code with libbitcoinconsensus.
More insight into Satoshi's code for the layman-
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3di6zc/nick_szabos_hidden_work/ct5j4wu