[biot]

The claim he's referencing:

  Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful
  protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it
  languished...In less than a decade, private concerns have
  taken that protocol and created one of the most important
  technological revolutions of the millennia.

Is Cerf's argument against the notion that it was private concerns that created the internet on top of a languishing protocol? That's valid, though it's certainly true that without the private sector investing in developing on top of the internet that it wouldn't be where it is today.

[gruseom]

Government funded the basic R&D; industry commercialized it. Has there been any real controversy about the history? It doesn't seem so. It's just that some ideologues don't like some of the facts.

[mcguire]

Let's see: 1975 (IIRC, TCP was somewhat later, but I'll be generous) plus 30 years would be 2005.

The Boucher Bill was 1992, prior to that commercial traffic was not allowed on the ARPA/NSFNET. Now, I wasn't around for the early Internet, since it wasn't particularly common until the mid '80's, but "languish" is not how I would describe what I saw. At that time, it connected every research and most educational organizations and did almost everything it does now except carry specifically commercial traffic. HTTP was not developed until the early '90's, and there was essentially no private interest in the Internet until HTTP had become prevalent, except for what it was already doing: email, news, and file transfer. And between the introduction of commercial traffic and infrastructural improvements which were part of the dot-com boom, the Internet did those three things significantly less well than it had previously.

So, yes it wouldn't be where it is today without private sector investing (particularly the massive infrastructure build-out in the late '90's). But "languish" for "30 years"? "Private concerns" created "technological revolutions"?