[ILUG] Re: ILUG sends s/w patents briefing document to Irish MEPs

[Joseph Kiniry]

Hi Niall, Paul, et al,

On 21 Mar, 2005, at 23:56, Niall O Broin wrote:

> On 21 Mar 2005, at 23:36, Joseph Kiniry wrote:
>
>> On 21 Mar, 2005, at 21:03, Paul O'Malley wrote:
>>> Another aside :) My previous TCP/IP comment was referring to the 
>>> fact that without a common unowned intercommunication standard the 
>>> net would not have happened. I omitted the information about Linux 
>>> and other OSS platforms allowed the commercial event (Internet 
>>> growth) that disrupted  communications so much that we now look at a 
>>> totally different communications landscape from that of 10 years 
>>> ago.
>>
>> But TCP/IP *did* happen without FOSS.  All the original 
>> implementations predate the GNU Project by over 15 years, for 
>> example.
>
> Paul didn't mention FOSS in the context of TCP/IP. He said "a common 
> unowned intercommunication standard" was essential to the genesis of 
> the net. Although the original standards were owned (I think DoD money 
> paid for them) they were free for all to use, and so they were very 
> similar in their availability to open source software today, and that 
> freedom was important to their wide adoption.

My apologies---I misinterpreted the context of the original TCP/IP 
mention.

I like this list because if I delay in responding to a point long 
enough (i.e., seemingly, hours) someone else will do the leg-work for 
me (see Rick's response on this point).

> The only comparable protocol (and in many ways of course it's NOT 
> comparable, but it was also very widely used) that springs to mind was 
> IPX but it was an owned protocol, and was used only by one company, or 
> to interwork with that company's products. I imagine there are many 
> readers of this list don't even know what IPX is.

Heh.  Anyone remember when early multiplayer-games simply didn't 
support TCP/IP? :)

Joe