The Internet Runs on Free and Open Source Software and So Does the DNS

> Rumors had persisted for years that the ARPANET had been built to protect national security in the face of a nuclear attack. It was a myth that had gone unchallenged long enough to become widely accepted as fact.

No, the Internet (inclusive of ARPANET, NSFNet, and so on) was not designed to survive a nuclear war. It's the worst kind of myth: One you can cite legitimate sources for, because it's been repeated long enough even semi-experts believe it.

The ARPANET was made to help researchers and to justify the cost of a mainframe computer:

> It's understandable how it could spread. Military communications during Nuclear War makes a more memorable story than designing a way to remote access what would become the first massively parallel computer, the ILLIAC IV. The funding and motivation for building ARPANET was partially to get this computer, once built, to be "online" in order to justify the cost of building it. This way more scientists could use the expensive machine.

> The CYCLADES network was the first to make the hosts responsible for the reliable delivery of data, rather than this being a centralized service of the network itself. Datagrams were exchanged on the network using transport protocols that do not guarantee reliable delivery, but only attempt best-effort [..] The experience with these concepts led to the design of key features of the Internet Protocol in the ARPANET project

Keeping with the theme of the thread, CYCLADES was destroyed because of greed:

> Data transmission was a state monopoly in France at the time, and IRIA needed a special dispensation to run the CYCLADES network. The PTT did not agree to funding by the government of a competitor to their Transpac network, and insisted that the permission and funding be rescinded. By 1981, Cyclades was forced to shut down.

France Telecom was privatised during the 1990s with the aquisition of the Orange Group, its current (commercial) branding.

Without IP protocols we probably would not even be born as a company. BBSes on analog modems or GSM data would be all we had.

My mother did remote tribal work in the brasilian interior, she grew up on the Amazon, I personally know well off Ruby devs who grew up unable to even read.

Whether you are against intervention or pro intervention, all across that spectrum, whatever your luxury belief may be, everyone is impacted by open-source.

Open source is an insane force multiplier, not just for production but for the entire training and r&d pipeline as well.