alt.interoperability.adversarial

But network effects were once a double-edge sword, one that could be wielded both by yesterday's Goliaths and today's Davids. Once, network effects made companies vulnerable, just as much as they protected them.

The early, pre-graphic days of the Internet were dominated by Usenet, a decentralized, topic-based discussion-board system that ran on UUCP -- AT&T's Unix-to-Unix Copy utility -- that allowed administrators of corporate servers to arrange for their computers to dial into other organizations' computers and exchange stored messages with them, and to pass on messages that were destined for more distant systems. Though UUCP was originally designed for person-to-person messaging and limited file transfers, the administrators of the world's largest computer systems wanted a more freewheeling, sociable system, and so Usenet was born.

Usenet systems dialed each other up to exchange messages, using slow modems and commercial phone lines. Even with the clever distribution system built into Usenet (which allowed for one node to receive long-distance messages for its closest neighbors and then pass the messages on at local calling rates), and even with careful call scheduling to chase the lowest long-distance rates in the dead of night, Usenet was still responsible for racking up some prodigious phone bills for the corporations who were (mostly unwittingly) hosting it. Read the rest