[11734] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Clinton Adminsitration Corporate Network Socialism? (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Miles R Fidelman)
Sat Apr 16 05:20:44 1994
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 15:46:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9404142143.A3537-0100000@ss1.digex.net>
On Thu, 14 Apr 1994, Doug Humphrey wrote:
> >to be fair, its not quite that simple: many of those employers were/are
> >receiving government contracts precisely to work on Internet engineering
> >activities (to cite a few: BBN, GTE, MITRE, SRI, lots of universities)
>
> Ah! Being taxpayers too, can I expect to go pick up a copy of
> all of that nice software that was developed in large part with
> my (and your) tax dollars? I think it sounds like a lot of fun being
> able to provide that kind of secure shopping service; perhaps I will
> go do that! Or am I likely to be disappointed when I go tell them
> that my company would like to use it all too?
>
well, not all that money went to sofware writing, a lot of it went to
standards writing, attendance at IETF meetings, late-night trouble
shooting, running network operations centers, etc.
as regards software, lot of it is available in various forms, for example:
i. way back when, DARPA paid BBN to develop a "reference implementation"
of TCP/IP - which ended up being the basis for most commercial TCP/IP
stacks, as well (I believe) as being incorporated into BSD Unix
ii. a lot of Federally funded software ends up in two forms - the form,
as developed under contract, which is usally available for the cost of a
tape, and a commercial, supported version -- example, the Diamond
multi-media mail system was developed by BBN under government contract,
and was readily available, incorporated into other research projects by
other organizations, etc. - it also was turned into BBN/Slate, a sort of
comercially supported project, with updates, sales, technical support,
etc. (I say sort of, because I was product manager for Slate for a while,
until it became obvious that BBN wouldn't invest the money to make it a
real commercial success - the downside of living on government contracts
is generally an inability to invest real dollars of one's own - leads to
lots of quasi-products)
iii. there are lots of other examples of software developed on government
money that is freely available
Miles
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Miles R. Fidelman mfidelman@civicnet.org
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Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century
Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere
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