I enthusiastically disagree.

If there are two independent Bitcoin clients with roughtly equal market share, then the protocol becomes the intersection of supported features on both clients. The protocol is no longer singularly developed ahead of the reference implementation. It will be possible for some feature to be added to the protocol (by people who also happen to be devs of the first clients), but the second client torpedoes the feature by not implementing it. (This is the exact hell that is facing LN at this very moment).

It's the reason why you don't see any major improvements to the PDF format. Because ISO standards have a tendancy of staying put.