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On Thu, 4 May 1995, R Ballard wrote:

> 
> your HTML guide - http://198.137.186.91/newslink/html.doc
> was completely unreadable!  I'm running Mosaic on Ultrix, so are
> 10 of our other users.
> 
> (Thank goodness it wasn't advertizing).
>
I've gotten several responses to this that assume that I should have 
Microsoft Word on every machine on the internet.

If Microsoft had published the specifications to Word Format in an 
Internet Architecture Board RFC, it might be possible to create a browser 
that could read Microsoft Word Files and could be ported to the 65,000 
permutations of hardware/software/applications... that currently make up 
the internet.

This issue has been as fundamental to the internet as the practice of 
"spamming".  If you want to put your supporting software to support an 
internet standard in binary, that's fine.  If you want it to become an 
internet standard, you must post sources and publish an announcement to
comp.sources.*

Those who have tried to foist a proprietary standard (Novell IPX/SPX for 
example) have usually found that the volunteers who define, support, and 
maintain the infrastructure of the internet can usually put up an alternative
that is funtionally superior to the proprietary product.

Remember, system administrators who get phone calls at 3:00 AM because 
someone sent garbage through their server are going to have to trace the 
message going through those links.  I have had several fun nights trying 
to figure out whether it was our routing/feed software or some server 
offering bozo content that mangled the user's display.

If I suddenly have to pay Microsoft $ 30 Million to be able to assure 
the integrety of the network, I would have to block access to that server 
on my routers.

> 	Rex Ballard


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon May  8 00:35:50 1995