Louis Davidson lays out an argument:
Something that every writer needs to be careful of is doing too much benchmarking-type work. In many of the software licensing agreements you have signed, you promise not to do that. But at the same time, you can generally give out performance numbers if you aren’t making claims about particular software, especially compared to another.
So, if you come up with an algorithm to do something in a better way than you have seen, it is nice to show the software, give the reader access to the code you are showing the performance of, and include the computer you are running it on.
Louis is referring to the DeWitt Clause, a fairly common clause in commercial database products that came about because Oracle was angry that David DeWitt made them look bad by providing a fair comparison to other platforms.