[omniORB] Why does _this() increment ref count on servant for the first time it's called?

[Tuyen Chau]

We are debugging the reference counting on our servants and ran into a 
peculiar problem with _this() function.  Why does _this() increment the 
reference count on the servant for the first time the function is 
called, and then if we call _this() again on the same servant 
subsequently, it does not increment the reference count again?  Is this 
the correct behavior that we are seeing?

Our servants derive from RefCountServantBase because we want them to go 
away when no clients need them anymore.  We are very careful with object 
reference counts and make sure that they are correct for the number of 
clients.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide,
Tuyen