[ih] Query: When did the IETF change to "everyone can come"?

[Mike Padlipsky]

At 07:27 AM 12/4/2006, Harald Alvestrand wrote:
>- The IETF started out as "people who work on DARPA projects related 
>to the ARPAnet"
>- It continued as "people who work on ARPAnet/Internet connected networks"

A Semantic Puritan's Point is clearly called for here.  Given that 
the "I" in "IETF" is for "Internet", unless "started out" is being 
used _very_ loosely the IETF per se _can't_ have started out as 
consisting of people who worked on APRANet-related projects only 
(ARPA/DARPA-sponsored or not ... despite the fact that at some level 
everybody working on the 'Net was _supposed_ to be *ARPA sponsored) 
-- especially since for perhaps half a dozen (or more?) years people 
who were working on what we usually just called "the 'Net" hadn't 
even heard of  the Internet since the term hadn't been coined 
yet.  Indeed, for around four or five years the underlying concept 
hadn't even been publically enunciated ... and that's based on using 
1969 as the first year even though it's doubtless arguable that the 
'Net was actually being worked on before '69.

(And there's at least one person who still regrets that the earlier 
coinage, "catenet", for concatenation of networks, didn't prevail 
over the less recondite/amusing "Internet", even though that coinage 
wasn't one of mine.  [I first heard it from Vint, I'm sure; I suspect 
I discussed it with him at some point in the last decade or so, but 
MiddleMiddleAgedMemory serves as fault as to whether he believed it 
to have been one of his or in fact somebody else's orginally which he 
took up the cudgels for at one point in time.]  But, then, I still 
deplore the emergence of "e-mail" for what we called "netmail" when 
we were inventing it -- and not only because "netmail" was one of mine....)


cheers, map

[who's sitting here chuckling to himself over how many of the Old 
Boys are in a state of shock that he let it go at that, without even 
raising the intriguing side issue of whether the "A" in  "IAB" was 
ever for anything other than "Architecture" and "Activities", much 
less which came first, much less any of the three or five other, at 
least semi-intriguing, side side issues that come to what's left of mind.]