[ih] Euro RFCs [was: W3C origins [was: J.C.R. Licklider]]

[Brian E Carpenter]

BTW, while checking the dates for this I came across the assertion that
the first RFC by a European author was RFC1405 (January 1993). This
struck me as implausible, so I checked. I believe it was in fact RFC588
in October 1973 "LONDON NODE IS NOW UP" when UCL joined ARPANET.

Regards/Ngā mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 01-Nov-26 18:07, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> On 01-Nov-26 15:50, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> 
>> Speaking of Internet History, the ARPANET et al --- There's another
>> player from the early days of The Internet that may not be well known to
>> Internet historians - J.C.R. Licklider
> 
> He's fully credited in any serious history of the Internet, I think,
> e.g. Katie Hafner's book.
> 
>> - Lick's vision was continued after he retired by his "chief of staff"
>> at MIT, Al Vezza, who convinced Tim Berners-Lee to come to MIT and lead
>> the W3C from there.
> 
> I would add that Michael Dertouzos was *at least* as influential as Al
> in attracting TimBL to MIT. Probably more, because Dertouzos's old pal
> George Metakides (an MIT alum) was the senior official in the European
> Commissionin charge of funding the European end of the W3C.
> 
> My understanding at the time was that Dertouzos and Metakides (they
> were both Greek) had decided that the main part of the W3C would be at
> MIT, with European Commission (EC) funding, but with a small European
> "pole". Metakides thought it would be a fine idea to place the European
> unit at CERN, but CERN refused to be part of an exercise whose main
> result would be to send European funds to the USA.
> 
> Al Vezza was very much in the room for these discussions. I wasn't, but
> I knew all the CERN participants, and in fact met them in the departure
> lounge at Brussels airport on their way back from the critical meeting.
> (I was in Brussels the same day for a meeting related to growing Internet
> capacity in Europe.) The CERN team in that discussion, from memory, was
> Mike Sendall, Tim B-L, Robert Cailliau, and Francois Fluckiger. Maybe David
> Williams, our Division Leader, was there too. All of them except Tim were
> flabbergasted by the idea that CERN (a non-EC institution) should be used
> to route money from the EC to MIT.
> 
> I heard within a few days that the CERN management definitely refused
> this. It seemed politically dangerous and was it even legal? Also it seemed
> outside CERN's mission as a physics laboratory. And nobody missed that
> Metakides and Dertouzos were buddies. So in the end, INRIA in France
> acted as the European pole.
> 
> Regards/Ngā mihi
>      Brian Carpenter
>