[ih] GOSIP & compliance

[Bob Purvy]

Funny: that quote is actually in my 2nd book (not out yet).

" 'Strategic' means you don't make any money."

I attributed it to someone else. I wonder who first coined it?

At 3Com, the Microsoft LAN Manager deal was unquestionably Strategic. While
my product, 3+Mail, which owed no royalties to anyone, was *very
definitely* not
Strategic.

(Note that I'm not claiming I wrote 3+Mail. It was already there when I
joined, although I did take it over.)

On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 1:26 PM Bill Nowicki <winowicki at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I was a bit involved in this at the time. My role was the lone TCP/IP guy
> at Sun Microsystems during the1980s, while we had a dedicated team doing
> the OSI stack. That was because the assumption in the marketing world was
> that TCP/IP was "for research and education", while commercial and
> government production users would use OSI. It was especially amusing to
> hear that the Corporation for Open Systems, the group formed to promote the
> OSI stack, itself used TCP/IP (including PC NFS for file sharing, that was
> leading edge technology at the time) on its internal systems.  I especially
> remember having a lunch with Milo Medin, who ran the network at NASA's Ames
> Research Center nearby. He pointed out that the letter of the law was that
> the vendor needed to show it supplied the OSI stack (it was available and
> actually worked to some extent), not that each US government customer
> needed to actually buy it. That is one reason why the revenues from Sun's
> OSI product were fairly trivial; TCP/IP was included in the OS for no extra
> charge. The Sun marketing called this a "strategic" product. Which became
> the running joke in Silicon Valley: whenever a product was a powerful
> person's pet idea but generated no revenue, it was called "strategic".
>
> Bill
>
> On Friday, March 18, 2022, 11:34:59 AM PDT, Andrew G. Malis via
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>
> It's been a while, but as I recall, as a part of this requirement,
> TCP/IP-to-OSI transition plans were necessary. While I was at BBN, I wrote
> such a transition plan for the MILNET (or it might have been for the DoD as
> a whole, as I said, things are hazy). I'm sure that it just went on a shelf
> somewhere once the requirement for a plan was met.
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 1:02 PM Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > I was around for all this, but probably not as much as some of you. So
> many
> > memories fade...
> >
> > I've been reading this
> > <
> >
> https://courses.cs.duke.edu//common/compsci092/papers/govern/consensus.pdf
> > >.
> > This passage...
> >
> >
> > *By August 1990, federal agencies were required to procure
> > GOSIP-compliantproducts. Through this procurement requirement, the
> > government intended to stimulate the market for OSI products. However,
> many
> > network administrators resisted the GOSIP procurement policy and
> continued
> > to operate TCP/IP networks, noting that the federal mandate, by
> specifying
> > only procurement, did not prohibit the use of products built around the
> > more familiar and more readily available TCP/IP.*
> >
> > ... in particular stuck out for me. Admins were required to go OSI, but
> > somehow it never happened.  Does anyone have any personal stories to
> relate
> > about this, either your own or someone else's?
> >
> > *Disclosure*: I'm writing historical fiction, mostly because that's what
> I
> > want to do. So there won't be any actual names in whatever I write. I'm
> > interested in the private choices people make, not the institutions,
> > towering figures, and impersonal forces that most historians write about.
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
> >
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>