[ih] History from 1960s to 2025

[Matt Mathis]

One key development (that predates me, so I can't provide details) was the
codification (and evolution) of the Internet Draft and RFC processes.    I
believe that finding the right balance between ease of contribution,
permanence and implied or explicit (non)authority, embodied by the use of
the name "Request For Comments" was as important as any individual
technical detail.   The publication process substantially inspired the
culture of the IETF (or perhaps vice-versa), which is what enabled
collaborative engineering between nominally competing organizations.

As far as I know RFCs were the first ever self published archival series of
documents.

Thanks,
--MM--
Evil is defined by mortals who think they know "The Truth" and use force to
apply it to others.
-------------------------------------------
Matt Mathis  (Email is best)
Home & mobile: 412-654-7529 please leave a message if you must call.



On Sat, Dec 20, 2025 at 6:09 PM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
> On 12/18/25 12:21 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> > And some of us thought, it was the continuation of building a
> resource-sharing network.  ;-)
>
> In the mid 1980's I spent a year or more at the Livermore Labs working
> on the MFE (magnetic confinement fusion energy) project. (Playing tennis
> with a multi-million degree ball of plasma as the ball was kinda fun.)
>
> I wasn't involved in the networking part but I certainly overheard a lot
> of expressed desire to share not only our simulations and measurements
> (we had a couple of seriously-gigantic fusion vessels across the road
> from my office) as well as our boatload of Cray machines and data
> libraries.
>
> The folks at the labs were pretty good a jury rigging things and it is
> my understanding that they created some duct-tape-and-bailing-wire
> systems to do that kind of sharing.
>
> Also, in the 1970's when I was at SDC I heard many tales about the Q7
> and Q32 computers, and the desire to time share the latter among
> research institutions.  But I have no real memory of what was said in
> those tales.
>
>      --karl--
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>