WebMink
Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Dan Gillmor's article 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success in Sunday's SJMN makes fascinating reading. To my eyes the summary is that the design philosophy of the Internet was self-similar. The outward design was about creating a system robust enough to 'route around' obstacles and failures, so there is a certain symmetry to the the way that choices were made that avoided corporate or bureaucratic control. Use of TCP/IP instead of OSI, use of Unix, building on top of existing networks rather than competing with them - all choices that avoided the 'helpful' interference of established bodies.

The one factor Dan's source Scott Bradner seems to omit, however, is the fact that all the innovation was done without the creation of intellectual property barriers. If the Internet was being created today, there would be patent barriers to early participation and royalty hurdles to prevent competitive deployment. If that had happened, the 'Net Effect' would never have happened.

If there is one lesson we need to learn today as the next generation of networked protocols is created, it's that all the work on infrastructure needs to be done in a restriction-free zone. Even the apparently benign-sounding "Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Terms" (RAND) being applied by patent holders today will have the effect of constraining participation to those able to escape the terms (which are only 'reasonable' to their authors). We need to insist now that all infrastructure standards are either restriction free or rejected - ideas where the right to exercise restrictions is reserved should be rejected at all costs in the infrastructure.

posted at 10:40 PM (UK) | |