Subject: Documenting our legacies

From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 14:19:31 -0800

I recently wrote a blog post documenting, in part, my experiences with 
the internet protocols in the mid 1980's (we didn't have connectivity 
until around 1990), and am planning on doing the same for DKIM. For all 
of the day to day squabbling, it's easy to lose sight that the Internet 
is really a remarkable achievement. The way it was built was much more 
akin to the Quantum Mechanics than a single Einstein having a good year. 
I consider the Quantum Mechanics to be most remarkable set of people the 
world has ever seen, especially how they cooperated and built on each 
other. None of us is getting any younger, and our memories are getting 
worse. It would be a shame for history -- and there will be history 
written -- to lose everybody's experiences. If _When Wizards Stay Up 
Late_ is our only legacy, there isn't going to be much fodder for future 
historians to figure out how we built this remarkable thing.

What would be ideal, I think, is for IETF itself to host a repo of all 
of those stories so they aren't subject to the whim of the flavor of the 
day repository. I recently read a PhD dissertation on the Usenet group 
soc.motss where she scraped years of dejanews (which was an imperfect 
repo, but better than nothing at all), and think we'd be doing a 
disservice to all of those future dissertations trying to make sense of 
the how/what/why's of the Internet, and especially the early days, by 
losing that knowledge.

Mike

PS: if you're interested, you can read it here: 
https://rip-van-webble.blogspot.com/2020/12/how-to-build-laser-printer-from-nothing.html

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From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 15:06:42 -0800

Consider https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/networking-the-web/
as a baseline. What would you add?
--
https://LarryMasinter.net https://interlisp.org

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From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 15:16:30 -0800

> as a baseline. What would you add?

There is *way* more to internet history than a pastiche with a few 
memorables on a timeline. It would be good to leave enough source 
material for future generations to know what happened. The best legacy 
of the internet is that it makes that almost trivial.

Mike

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From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 23:26:56 +0000

Hiya,

On 28/12/2020 23:16, Michael Thomas wrote:
> It would be good to leave enough source material for future generations 
> to know what happened. The best legacy 

Not sure about "best," but one of the major pros of usenet
and mail lists is ease of archiving. If there were a way to
do the same for e.g. github issue discussion (without being
dependent on github.com's owner de-jour), that'd be good. Is
there such? If so, could the IETF maintain one? And if not,
could we help archiving possible?

S.

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From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 15:37:36 -0800

On 12/28/20 3:26 PM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>> It would be good to leave enough source material for future 
>> generations to know what happened. The best legacy 
Mailing lists are definitely raw fodder, but like Usenet they are also 
drinking from a fire hose. The candidate I mentioned did a lot of the 
computerized analysis to figure out some of the questions she wanted to 
know the answer to because there was just so much data. But what I'm 
thinking is sort of orthogonal to that, more of the whys and what 
motivated people, how we contributed, and the reasons behind it. As an 
example, I've known you for years but I don't have any idea how you came 
to being an IETF lifer. :) Somebody through no fault of our own may end 
up curious what was going behind the scenes of the torrent of mailing 
list traffic.

Mike

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From: John Kristoff <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 17:39:26 -0600

On Mon, 28 Dec 2020 15:16:30 -0800

> of the internet is that it makes that almost trivial.

It might not be exactly the archive you're looking for, but if you're
unaware of the Internet History list now maintained by the Internet
Society, that might be a good place to post to or make others aware of
a pointer to first person accounts.

  <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>

It has been in operation since 2001 and there are many early Internet
people there participating.

John

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From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 15:45:41 -0800

> people there participating.

The vehicle is sort of irrelevant more than that the IETF or somebody 
like it own it so it doesn't get lost to history. If there is an 
available vehicle, so much the better.

Mike

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From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 16:04:17 -0800

At the risk of being accused of self-promotion, documenting Internet history is kind
of a side-effect of documenting “current and emerging” technologies, protocols and
even policies. We did this with ConneXions—The Interoperability Report for example,
and you can see the complete archive of 117 issues here:

http://www.cbi.umn.edu/hostedpublications/Connexions/index.html

A lot of interesting history there, including that whole “Components of OSI" saga,
Network Management Wars, FTP’s Tiresome Problems, “What does the IAB Do, Anyway?” 
3270 over Telnet, ISDN, SMDS, FDDI, X.25, and much, much more. Enjoy!

We’re continuing this tradition today with The Internet Protocol Journal, see:

http://www.protocoljournal.org

Your input to what will eventually become “history” is always welcome!

Ole

> The vehicle is sort of irrelevant more than that the IETF or somebody like it own it so it doesn't get lost to history. If there is an available vehicle, so much the better.
> 
> Mike

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher
The Internet Protocol Journal
Office: +1 415-550-9433
Cell:   +1 415-370-4628
Web: protocoljournal.org
E-mail: [email-masked]
E-mail: [email-masked]
Skype: organdemo

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From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 16:05:47 -0800

>    <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>

I looked at it not realizing it was a mailing list. I think it's the 
first time I've seen Vint Cerf post on something attached to IETF, etc.

Mike

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From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 16:14:23 -0800

> Your input to what will eventually become “history” is always welcome!

Oh yeah, I forgot about your journal! I guess what I'm worried about 
most of all is that there is sort of a Rosetta Stone that translates for 
future generations where to find everything (yes the analogy is 
tortured, forgive me). It would be good to leave behind as much as 
possible from as many angles as possible.

Mike

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From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:16:57 +0000

Hiya,

On 28/12/2020 23:37, Michael Thomas wrote:
> know the answer to because there was just so much data. 

I agree that archiving theses related to the IETF and, more
broadly, the Internet would be good too.

> But what I'm 
> motivated people, how we contributed, and the reasons behind it. 

Right, mine was a related but tangential point - those who
are writing those theses benefit if they can access the raw
archives in detail and to some extent in context. And I'm
concerned that github can't provide that.

> As an 
> to being an IETF lifer. :) 

Heh - maybe someday I'll reduce that to a mail-sized set of
words:-)

Cheers,
S.

> Somebody through no fault of our own may end

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2020 13:39:05 +1300

Michael,

Yes, a well organised catalogue of what exists plus some organisation willing to manage its continued existence (for a few hundred years, if possible) would be excellent, but I'm certain that <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history> is the place to develop a proposal for that. It means a lot of work, though.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 29-Dec-20 13:14, Michael Thomas wrote:
> .

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From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 16:50:17 -0800

> Yes, a well organised catalogue of what exists plus some organisation willing to manage its continued existence (for a few hundred years, if possible) would be excellent, but I'm certain that <http…

Today, I learned :) One great thing about IETF is that it is extremely 
conservative re: technology brevis. But I am very heartened to know now 
that people are concerned about our legacy.

Mike

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From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Dec 2020 03:06:30 -0000

In article <[email-masked]>,
>first time I've seen Vint Cerf post on something attached to IETF, etc.

This is the history list that Joe Touch used to run. We moved it to
ISOC so it'd have a stable long term home with archiving.

R's,
John
-- 
Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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From: Joseph Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 19:42:12 -0800

> On Dec 28, 2020, at 7:06 PM, John Levine <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

He posted most recently to the main IETF list in 2005 and to a number of WG lists as recently as 2018:
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/search/?qdr=a&start_date=&end_date=&q=from%3A%28cerf%29&as=1 <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/search/?qdr=a&start_date=&end_date=&q=from:(cerf)&as=1>

> This is the history list that Joe Touch used to run.

The internet-history list is not affiliated with the IETF per se; it is graciously hosted by the ISOC as a service to the Internet community in general, and I (still) manage it.

Joe

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From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2020 03:43:32 +0000

> If there were a way to
    there such? 

Martin's tooling (https://github.com/martinthomson/i-d-template) provides a make target ("make issues") that pulls down all issues and pull requests from GitHub and puts a json archives file into a branch. The IETF is using it to archive any document that has a "GitHub URL" in its DataTracker entry.  Robert Sparks set it up and is probably the best person to answer questions about it.  I think it's a few -dozen documents/repo's IIRC.