[ih] Installed base momentum (was Re: Design choices in SMTP)

[Brian E Carpenter]

Thanks Scott.

I'd add international spread as a major feature, and that was strongly affected by Larry Landweber (and others) who spread the meme widely in academia.

Also:
"Tim Berners-Lee developed..." is a bit hero-worshippy. Actually, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau developed and propagated the Web. Robert's part has been consistently undersold.

For those who don't know it, these crucial points:

• Provided the protocol specifications for free
• Provided the software for free
• Did not patent any aspect

were due to those who wrote the CERN Convention in 1953, specifying that the results of CERN research must be published:

“The Organization shall have no concern with work for military requirements and the results of its experimental and theoretical work shall be published or otherwise made generally available.”

To my personal knowledge, Berners-Lee and Cailliau persuaded CERN management to allow the WWW release to the public domain on the basis of those words. (http://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399)

    Brian


On 14-Feb-23 08:50, Scott Bradner via Internet-history wrote:
> for what its worth - here is my take on some of the reasons that the Internet (and specifically
> TCP/IP) took over the world
> 
> Forks: Decisions that got us the Internet we have
> https://www.sobco.com/presentations/2020-06-25-forks.pdf
> 
> Scott
> (I, along with Scott Shackelford, have a book on the subject that should be published at some
> point - the text is done & now in publisher wait)