"Networking needs to define a format spec for routing and switching, and then have vendors meet the spec."

Please check out the IETF (www.ietf.org) -- This is exactly how it works.

But BGP has no security, is complicated from an implementation standpoint, and you are right, there is a bit of a software duoculture. Juniper and Cisco. That's it.

This has happened before... too bad the routers didn't crash BEFORE propagating the bad BGP updates. :-)