Re: [tlug] [OT] Say _no_ to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:

 > I think that MS (and many other companies) "stealing" the BSD TCP/IP
 > stack may be one of the greatest successes that open source has ever
 > had.

+1

 > Luring everyone on to a common, open networking standard, and
 > spiking a couple of proprietary networking protocols in the process,
 > probably did more than anything else to make the Internet what it is
 > today.

I don't think the BSD stack had that much to do with spiking BitNET,
ChaosNET, DECNet, and so on.  I'm not even sure it really had that
much to do with spiking NetBIOS and AppleTalk.  I think that the
growth of the Internet was really very much about the "best current
practice" approach that the IETF has always taken to standards.

But the availability of the BSD stack definitely made Microsoft's (and
others') decision to support TCP/IP a no-brainer, and was a shortening
of the way.  In combination with the threat from the NCSA suite over
Crynwr's packet drivers, it was an offer they couldn't refuse.

 > It's interesting to think that had that stack been GPL'd, Stallman might
 > still be distributing gcc via magtapes through the mail today.

<shiver mode="uncontrollable">