[ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/21/16 11:28 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:

>
> Ofer Inbar wrote:
>> SMTP and NNTP came with no auth or access control or any sort of
>> security that I recall in the early days, and weren't they both
>> designed consciously and deliberately for a distributed network
>> with independent management of each node?
> at the time smtp was defined, everyone who could make a tcp/ip
> connection to you was trustworthy. government agencies and contractors
> including universities. there was no reason to authenticate or secure it
> at that stage. the idea of netcom or alternet where someone who could
> make tcp/ip sessions toward your server might have nothing to lose (in
> terms of their internet access or their government contract) was rarely
> considered, and when it was considered, one set of folks said it was a
> bad idea and the network should remain mostly closed, and another set of
> folks said it was a great idea and we should not make the rest of
> humanity jump through any special authentication hoops in order to
> access our services. so, all of us were wrong, about everything, but
> differently.
>

Somehow "trustworthy" and "universities" - in the late 60s - don't seem 
together.  You know, there were these things called "students" floating 
around, many of whom were spending a lot of their time in the streets 
voicing distinctly anti-government and anti-military sentiments.  Also 
the days when the MIT AI Lab handed out ITS accounts to all comers 
(that's how I first got on the net, Fall 1971, a few weeks before Ray 
Tomlinson sent the first ARPANET email - great timing on my part, a 
front row seat for lots of things).

Miles Fidelman



-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra