Copyright © 2007, Mohsen BANAN

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Contents

List of Tables

0.1 The dotCon Attack on the Engineering Profession

Engineers built the Internet based on principles of freedom and collaboration.

In the late 90s financiers and businessmen took the Internet and turned it into dotCon. The dot-com bubble was a massive fraud perpetrated by financiers against the engineering profession, honest businesses, and the public. For me personally, the dotCon era was a call to action to take steps to protect my profession and expose fraudulent business practices.

Preservation of privacy and societal freedoms in Internet is partly the responsibility of software engineers.

Our introduction of concept of Libre Services and an open business model based on copyleft and patent-freedom is part of fulfilling that responsibility.

0.1.1 Responsibility of First Generation Internet Engineers

Generally speaking, engineering is not amongst critical professions that are essential to the health of the society.

The nature of engineering work is simple and straight forward. You build good things and you get paid for it.

Emergence of software engineering and Internet over the past 50 years or so have somewhat changed things. Before software, what engineers built was material. Rules for ownership of buildings and bridges is clear and straight forward. But who should own software? Should software development process model be based on the competitive model or should it be collaborative.

The businessmen and capitalists followed the proprietary and the competitive model and have produced the likes of Microsoft Windows.

The engineers followed the free/libre and the collaborative model and have produced the likes of GNU/Linux.

The businessmen, financiers and capitalists want copyright and patents. Engineers defended their profession by rejecting copyright and patents.

Internet was initially built on the libre/free model, but now business dominates it. The overall model of Internet operations is being determined as I write.

What happens to the direction of Internet is being determined right now. Future generations will experience the consequences of our action or inaction. Future generation of Internet engineers will have a great deal less power to impact direction of the Internet.

As first generation Internet engineers it is our responsibility to take it in the direction of libre/free and collaborative.

0.2 MS Windows vs GNU/Linux

Success of GNU/Linux.