[ih] A paper

[Vint Cerf]

thanks Andrew.

There were definitely some interesting political dynamics for TCP/IP -
getting HP, Digital Equipment Corp and IBM LABS to implement was a very
deliberate political effort.
Of course the OSI/TCP debates were heavy with politics. Getting the USG to
move away from its absolute insistence on ISO was political. Getting DOD to
formally adopt TCP/IP in 1982 was political. Getting NIST to do a blue
ribbon panel review of TCP/IP vs TP was political. Getting DOE, NSF, NASA
and DARPA to form the FRICC and then the FNC was political. ..... :-))))

v




On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 8:38 PM Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> More than one reply at once.
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 07:57:02PM -0400, vinton cerf wrote:
> >
> >Vint: huh? I thought that was good engineering!
>
> I think so, too, but I rather hope it isn't contentious to suggest
> that there are organizational politics that are sometimes involved in
> how one tackles an engineering problem.  One of my persistent
> annoyances, actually, is the tendency of people who show up with a
> design to burn everything down and start over because of "technical
> considerations".  It might even be _true_ that what they propose is
> technically better in some measure, but deployed base is not merely a
> technical fact to be dealt with: it's also an economic and political
> fact.
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 05:09:05PM -0700, Bob Purvy wrote:
> >
> >
> >This is what someone who is not a practicing engineer would say:
> >"everything is political."
> >
> >No, Andrew, some people just want to get the job done.
>
> I think I rather explicitly said that I do _not_ think everything is
> political.  But "just want to get the job done" is a phrase that (when
> I was doing engineering work) I often found was used to suppress some
> inconvenient consideration.  A lot of abuses and security
> vulnerabilities have come from "just get on with it", so I don't find
> such an argument to be terribly convincing on its own.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at crankycanuck.ca
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


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