Less heated rhetoric (about the future)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Anthony Sorace [anothy () gmail com]
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 11:10 PM
To: David Farber; tfairlie () frontiernet net
Subject: Re: [IP] Less heated rhetoric (about the future)

Tom Fairlie wrote:

> PS If only Dennis Ritchie had gotten Inferno off the ground and into the
> switches and phones. I suggested to him back in 96/97 several ways it could
> be used to facilitate intelligent networking, and he replied saying that the
> business (i.e., switch/cell) groups at Lucent wouldn't even talk to them. No
> wonder they closed their doors. Shame on you, Lucent! Another rotten
> development: without Inferno/Limbo, we're all stuck with Java now!

Lucent tried, briefly: about 1998-2000 they had a project called
PathStar, which was built around Inferno. It was intended to be a
carrier-grade switch, but since the 5E folks would have none of it, it
was an entirely independent group. The political fights from competing
with the company's cash cow were substantial, but what killed it in
the end was the same thing that led to the rest of the Lucent's
implosion at around the same time: the assumption that all these new,
unproven CLECs with no particular business model would be the same
class of customers as the ILECs.

I worked in the Inferno Business Unit, then PathStar. Lucent licensed
Inferno to a UK company called Vita Nuova (Michael Baldwin, who also
was on PathStar briefly, and I were VN's US office, while it existed),
who's still around, working on it, and distributing it. The number of
near-misses with phenomenal success Inferno's had is downright tragic
for those familiar with the technology, but it's certainly still
around, available, and functional. I use it daily.
Anthony Sorace



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