Is there a bright future for open software projects?

[Jeremy Hylton]

Kyler Laird <Kyler at news.Lairds.org> wrote in message news:<rn5qb-221.ln1 at news.lairds.org>...
> [followup to my own post]
> 
> Ah!  I found the quote I mentioned.
> 	http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/04/university_open_source/print.html
> 
> 	Had his predecessors understood how huge the Internet
> 	would turn out to be, Hoskins figures, they would
> 	surely have licensed the protocols, sold the rights to
> 	a corporation and collected a royalty for the U.C.
> 	Regents on Internet usage years into the future. It is
> 	the kind of deal his department, the Office of
> 	Technology Licensing, cuts all the time.
> 
> Am I the only one who reads "they would surely have licensed
> the protocols, sold the rights to a corporation and collected a
> royalty for the U.C. Regents on Internet usage years into the
> future" as "they would surely have killed it"?

I've spoken with several people who said that DARPA new exactly
what it was doing when it supported the TCP/IP code developed at
Berkeley.  The goal was to get an implementation that was not
encumbered by royalties so that it would be widely used.  Some
big company had already produced an encumbered version, and that
was considered unacceptable.

Jeremy