[178] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
is fixing a broken TCP acceptable use?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Edward Vielmetti)
Fri Nov 16 16:20:29 1990
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 90 15:58:51 EST
From: Edward Vielmetti <emv@ox.com>
Can you think of a situation where a vendor supplying a patch to
their TCP which causes it to interoperate better on the internet,
is there a scenario under which that is not appropriate use of
the R&D NSFNET network?
In particular, if I were to tell you that packets from an NSF
supercomputer site at Cornell were crashing a machine here and
that the vendor of my machine is mailing me a tape because of
NSF rules instead of e-mailing the fix, would you think that was
an acceptable situation?
You can interpret the existing rules any number of ways. One way
is that "anything commercial is tainted". Another way is that
"do what you like, just don't get caught". Or just get the personal
imprimatur of Steve Wolff and it's OK. I don't know.
--Ed
emv@ox.com
formerly emv@math.lsa.umich.edu, now seeing what all the fuss was about
