[337] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
A few questions re current discussions...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Mon Mar 11 13:26:07 1991
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 91 13:11:22 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: jhaverty@us.oracle.com
Cc: steve@cise.nsf.gov, jhaverty@us.oracle.com, com-priv@psi.com,
In-Reply-To: Jack Haverty's message of Mon, 11 Mar 91 08:56:06 PST <9103111656.AA09937@rivendell.us.oracle.com>
>So, to make a long story longer, the question I have is "What applications have
>surfaced during the Internet Era which have become so obviously useful that they
>are now part of the definition of "The Internet", and should be part of the
>foundation *provided* as part of the next era - the NREN? Or in a
>commercialization of the Internet?"
>
>Jack
Some of this perception is no doubt structural. I'll offer a case in
point, Ingres/STAR. This is a distributed database application which
knows where on a network (in which ingres database) a data item is
stored, single queries can traverse multiple distributed databases.
People out there use this to do real work on internets and have
certainly developed real applications using this technology. But their
very nature tends to cause them not to be shared across the internet
in a public way.
So, perhaps part of the problem that comes to mind is, now that we can
share everything, what indeed do we wish to share?
Due to the non-proprietary nature of the internet the answer has been
simple and falls into two categories:
1. That which is free (e.g. anonymous ftp).
2. That which is mine, to be shared only with me (e.g. telnet).
It's not really the dearth of applications that I think you're
alluding to, but rather the dearth of PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE
applications.
I assure you, there is at least one very nice application built around
a product like Ingres/STAR out there. But you (and I) are not invited
to partake of them, and probably have little legitimate need for them
(e.g. some university's inter-departmental grants management
database.)
Which brings us back to the original question of whether or not the
Internet will become a base for applications which break those
constraints I listed. And how can we make that happen.
Perhaps the problem is that we have pretty much saturated (at least
for the moment) that which people are willing to do for free (packrat
source archives, some name services etc.)
-Barry Shein
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