> For the historians:
> >>Do people realize that it wasn't even in the budget to
> >>have the 14 of us handling in-addrs, ip allocation/assignment,
> >>SWIP, all of the domain name issues and answer the phones in
> >>early 1995? The whole registration process/budget was not
> >>designed for vanity-tagging the Internet. NSF did not
> >>intend to fund that purpose.
NSF and NSI had a legally enforceable agreement. Before amendment #11
(the one that created the fee-for-registration structure) that agreement,
obligated NSF to cover NSI's costs and pay an additional fee (i.e. a
guaranteed profit.) One can't offer much sympathy if NSI's management
didn't demand that NSF live up to its legal obligations and instead simply
loaded more work on its employees.
And today, as a result of NSF's largess and grant of a protected monopoly
to NSI isn't the current market value in the hands of NSI's shareholders
now several billion dollars?
One can't say that, from the point of view of NSI's stockholders, that NSI
was undercompensated for work done.
--karl--
