>In other words, big, well-defined projects.
>
>
>--- On Tue, 3/3/09, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> >
> > the internet
so totally NOT a big, well-defined project. It was a lot of little projects that were patched together. There was not much of a planning process in place.
and i might add that, were it not for the introduction of standards bodies -- which are all voluntary -- it would have been even more fucked up -- and NOT just because of proprietary systems, but also because of the complete anarchy.
i mean, for fuck's sake, RFCs govern internet standards -- or are supposed to. An RFC was, initially, a reference to Request for Comment. It wasn't especially formal. People put a standard out there and made a RFC -- request for comment -- feedback. But what happpened was -- nothing. It never got much beyond that and, voila!, we have RFCs, w hich everyone in networking is familiar with --we use them on a daily basis, now, but that wasn't the result of some well defined project.
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_rfc_invent.htm
If you read that link, what you'll see is that a lot of these people _volunteered_ their labor time but they were supported in that effort by the jobs for other outfits:
"<http://www.isi.edu/div7/individual_pages/reynolds.html>Joyce K. Reynolds was drafted by Postel in 1983 to help with the increasing workload of the RFC Editor and <http://www.livinginternet.com/i/iw_mgmt_iana.htm>IANA management, and continues in that role today. Another indefatigable <http://www.networksorcery.com/enp/authors/ReynoldsJoyceK.htm>contributor to the Internet, Reynolds has also been a member of the IETF, helped develop the Experimental Multimedia Mail System, <http://www.livinginternet.com/e/ew_pop_pop3.htm>Post Office Protocol, and Telnet Option Specifications, helped update the File Transfer Protocol, and established the RFC documents published as <http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_rfc_ref.htm#fyi>FYIs."
Currently, I'm involved in the development of microformat standards. You could say that my involvement is _subsidized_ by my current employer. In fact, it is! It's voluntary -- and I'm involved completely for my own self-interest -- for the resume, to make my life easier, etc. My company surely doesn't much give a shit, though they will, eventually, benefit from it. Other people I've worked with are there precisely because they work for Google or Microsoft or Amazon and want a hand in developing the standards that will "govern" (I say that, but it's voluntary) the way they develop Web-based product.
And that's how a lot of this stuff happens. Certainly not as some well-defined project with, like, goals and milestones and crap. :)
shag
"let's be civil and nice, but not to the point of obeying the rules of debate as defined by liberal blackmail (in which, discomfort caused by a challenge is seen as some vague form of harassment)."
-- Dwayne Monroe, 11/19/08
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