5 ms·

The article kind of misses out on the networking standards of the time - there were many of which TCP and IP were just one, most of the rest were either proprie

by Taniwha 2mo ago

The article kind of misses out on the networking standards of the time - there were many of which TCP and IP were just one, most of the rest were either proprietary (DNA SNA BNA etc) and incompatible, or owned by telecoms who wanted to be able to charge per packet(X.25). TCP/IP won (IMHO) because the implementation was open source, and because no one was going to make a buck by locking others out (or charging them for the right to build an implementation). Plus there was a working reference implementation available for the taking

pjmlp 2mo ago
Same story with UNIX and C "success". Everything else was commercial, while by being prevented to sell UNIX, AT&T was fine with giving its source code to universities for a symbolic price for sending the tapes, and the Lion's book. It changed quite fast the moment AT&T was allowed to claim ownership, however just like with IBM and PC clones, AT&T could no longer take control over UNIX.
nickdothutton 2mo ago
While TCP/IP was open source and not controlled by any 1 vendor, quite a few companies made good money from selling TCP/IP stacks and won themselves billion dollar valuations in the process[1][2]. Of course this was during a time when Microsoft saw no point in including an IP stack with their OS, or indeed much point in connecting to the Internet at all! Some of the younger readers may find these things hard to believe. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTP_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTP_Software [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetManage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetManage
- tomwheeler 2mo ago
  Don't forget Trumpet Winsock [1]. I worked for an ISP at the time that provided it on a floppy disk (along with a newsreader, FTP client, telnet client, and web browser). Although I doubt many customers paid for it, Trumpet Winsock was shareware and very widely used on Windows 3.x. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpet_Winsock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpet_Winsock

by Taniwha 2mo ago

pjmlp 2mo ago

Same story with UNIX and C "success". Everything else was commercial, while by being prevented to sell UNIX, AT&T was fine with giving its source code to universities for a symbolic price for sending the tapes, and the Lion's book. It changed quite fast the moment AT&T was allowed to claim ownership, however just like with IBM and PC clones, AT&T could no longer take control over UNIX.

nickdothutton 2mo ago

While TCP/IP was open source and not controlled by any 1 vendor, quite a few companies made good money from selling TCP/IP stacks and won themselves billion dollar valuations in the process[1][2]. Of course this was during a time when Microsoft saw no point in including an IP stack with their OS, or indeed much point in connecting to the Internet at all! Some of the younger readers may find these things hard to believe. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTP_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTP_Software [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetManage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetManage

tomwheeler 2mo ago
Don't forget Trumpet Winsock [1]. I worked for an ISP at the time that provided it on a floppy disk (along with a newsreader, FTP client, telnet client, and web browser). Although I doubt many customers paid for it, Trumpet Winsock was shareware and very widely used on Windows 3.x. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpet_Winsock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpet_Winsock