> While it is technically true that the Internet was born of DARPA requirements and funding, I think that case is often overstated. Not only was data networking an area of existing research inside US and European labs, but also the first version of the full scale Internet as we know it was born on NSF funding and an NSF managed backbone - which leaves intact Doug’s basic point about public funding. Andy has already noted the major contributions of monopolist funded Bell Labs, but I will also point out the importance of people funded UC Berkeley.
I intended that mention of Bell mostly as a riff, but it seems worth noting that much if not most of software libre and otherwise open standards have been born of institutions with some degree of public shelter, as opposed to private-sector companies or the popular notion of lone gunmen in their moms' basements.
> Angelus Novus points, quite correctly, to the libertarian leaning of the US Linux/OpenSource movement and the disconnect with the way the same operating system is perceived in Europe. At the same time, this libertarianism is/was a trend born from and maintained by Linux’s creator, the European Linus Torvalds now living in the USA, in contention with both the public, university model of competing systems like Minix (from Tannenbaum) and the politically sophisticated FSF movement born in the USA (Richard Stallman). The Linus brand of wilfully naive liberal-libertarianism can also be seen in the early years of the IETF (“we do not believe in kings, democracies…”, etc).
My anecdotal impression is that the attitude among rank-and-file American techies has shifted since the fat years of the '90s to one more interested in a welfare state. Another impression I have, perhaps outdated, is that libertarians have a particular fascination with sectors that have depended most on the public tit: computers, electronics, nuclear, and aerospace. You can pick up cheers about outfits like Virgin Galactic "sticking it to NASA" -- by replicating what leviathan did a half-century ago, but this time with that much time put into researching the necessary materials science, electronics, navigation infrastructure, etc.
-- Andy