IP: more on minor nit re: 10 choices

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Craig Partridge <craig () aland bbn com>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 06:03:23 -0400
To: dgillmor () sjmercury com, dave () farber net, sob () das harvard edu
Subject: minor nit re: 10 choices


> 5) The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds the University of
> California-Berkeley, to put TCP/IP into the Unix operating system originally
> developed by AT&T. Berkeley thereby created a full but low-cost network
> operating system, along with a full suite of network applications, that
> computer start-up companies flocked to use in their boxes. It was, says
> Bradner, ``a way to get into the networking game without spending a lot of
> money.'' So it spread fast.

Complex but minor error here.

Simple form of the error: DARPA funded Berkeley, not NSF.  A nice example
    of tech transfer from the military.

The real story: DARPA funded BBN Technologies to put TCP/IP into BSD.
    Up to 4.1c BSD, it was the BBN TCP/IP in BSD.  But Bill Joy didn't like
    the BBN code, so he completely rewrote it and put the version of the
code
    we know into 4.1c just before heading out to found Sun Microsystems.
    I think this rewrite was done without DARPA approval.  I do know that
    DARPA was funding two versions of BSD networking code (BBN's and
Berkeley's)
    for the next few years and was sometimes annoyed about it.  (Though my
    recollection is that the competition was good and probably improved the
    quality of the TCP code substantially).

Craig
former CSNET techie and the guy who inherited managing the BBN TCP project
for its last two years or so in the late 1980s.


------ End of Forwarded Message

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