[ih] Who Paid for the Internet? (was Re: sad news: Peter Kirstein)

[Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond]

Dear Toerless,

On 13/01/2020 18:35, Toerless Eckert via Internet-history wrote:
> I forgot the name/number of the EU directive about ISO/OSI Sigh.
> Was quite a bit of annoyance back in the days.

it wouldn't be this one, by any chance?
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:51995DC0492

The "IMPACT" report, which was so "wise" that it under-estimated the
Internet - apart from a small one and a half page Chapter 1.5, page 27
where it mentions its exponential growth whilst at the same time
pointing out the difficulty to find information and the introduction of
"Software of varying degrees of sophistication, such as the
World-Wide-Web and Mosaic..."

There's also a Chapter 4 on EDI - Electronic Data Interchange, which by
itself wasn't such a bad idea, but the technologies that were proposed
were ill-suited. And then, there's the "pièce de résistance", Chapter
4.1.2 Electronic Mail which boasts the use of X.400 email. It is obvious
that the authors had never used X.400.

Chapter 7.8.1 at least mentions the growth of the Internet but does not
compare this with the puny numbers using X.400, and I don't expect
readers of that day to have reached that far down (page 107)

One additional sad thing is that, as with every Commission project, the
final document was dated 24 October 1995 and by then, with references
from 1993 and 1994, a lot of the report was obsolete. And OSI vs. IP
battle had already tipped to the advantage of IP. FYI Yahoo had been
created in January 1994. WebCrawler in April 1994. Lycos in May 1994.
Excite in October 1995. A definition of blindness on the old continent.

Kindest regards,

Olivier