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30 Years of Ethernet
Babylon Rocker writes "An interview with one of the inventors of Ethernet." Metcalfe talks about the history of Ethernet as well as what he's been up to for the last couple years. (Not surprisingly, he's now a VC ;)
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An interesting but old article on wired about Metcalfe here: The Legend of Bob Metcalfe
One indicator of this is that the relevant RFCs (791 and 793) are dated in 1981. At the time there were all kinds of long-haul data links, and lots of short-haul stuff too. I remember the University where I was an undergrad developing their own network to connect terminals to mainframes. Then they added X.25 capability so you could talk to people in other places (and boy was it expensive!). Then they hooked it up to the Internet. Then they ditched it completely, but not before several hacks to hook those new-fangled PCs up to it. At the time I considered myself fortunate to have a 9600 baud SLIP link.
It's clear from the earliest RFCs that people really didn't know what computer networking was going to look like, and were making it up as they went along. People were certainly networking computers prior to the final form of TCP/IP; just that the present implementation of TCP/IP gelled the same year MTV went on the air.
...laura
Second, Metcalfe defines "broadband" to mean "high bitrate" rather than "uses a broad frequency band". Nitpickers like me have been quibbling over this change in definitions, but if someone like Metcalfe has gone over, it's time to let it drop!
Bob Metcalfe once predicted that the internet would 'gigalapse' due to IP namespace exhaustion and sheer load. It didn't happen.
Bob has made a career out of making an ass of himself with idiotic predictions coupled with a humongous ego. He fancied himself quite clever when he called the free software/open source movement "the open sores movement." Har har! You may have a career with ZDNET yet, Bob.
Hey Bob we thank you for ethernet, but you're still a jerk.
He makes this rather ignorant comment:
Open source contributors who use the GPL never "give their intellectual property away". Copyrights are very strongly defended; the recent FSF vs OpenTV story is sufficient proof of this. Trademarks are very strongly defended: Linus and RedHat have both defended trademarks. Patents are a sticky mess but even then the GPL doesn't demand that you give up patents; only that you don't use them to restrict or impede licensing. The open source movement is not so stupid as to "give away" code. Strong ownership of intellectual property is at the very core of open source.
The subtle but important distinction is that open source developers want to share their intellectual property. The philosophy is "you may use my IP if I can use yours". This is not giving anything away; it's building a community of cooperation. There is an exchange of value between two parties even though the exchange is not monetary.
I suppose it's possible to argue that BSD zealots are giving their intellectual property away. Yet another reason to avoid the BSD license.
An interesting quote from your linked to story:
Why do I think Linux won't kill Windows? Two reasons. The Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash. And Linux is 30-year-old technology.
Name a single networking infrastructure used more commonly than the 30-year-old ethernet!
Why does this seem ironic to me?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.