NSF paid marc andreessen's salary when he was writing NCSA Mosaic, then let him walk with the concept (and code, maybe? I forget) and start Netscape. - ThreadSky

sifu.tweety.fish • 32 days ago

NSF paid marc andreessen's salary when he was writing NCSA Mosaic, then let him walk with the concept (and code, maybe? I forget) and start Netscape.

Reposted from tweety fish

it's evocative of the government agency most directly responsible for the existence of cryptocurrency and "AI" is being destroyed by people who are mindlessly obsessed with tearing things down in favor of cryptocurrency and "AI"

Comments

talentedripley.bsky.social•32 days ago

Jesus we the people get NOTHING ever.

aniccia.bsky.social•32 days ago

We get to bask in their glower.

ellemoria.bsky.social•31 days ago

We ✍🏻 get ✍🏻 to ✍🏻 bask ✍🏻 in ✍🏻 their ✍🏻 glower ✍🏻

well put

merz.bsky.social•32 days ago

And before the NSF grant, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, funded largely by the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, also known as the Gore Bill, because it was driven by… Al Gore.

primarylupine.bsky.social•31 days ago

The Internet as we know it today still marches to the beat of that drum.

The Al Gore rhythm.

anthrodiva.bsky.social•31 days ago

ba dum tish

notmymonkeymon.bsky.social•32 days ago

Tech bruhs are eliminating the competition.
Manipulating the market by buying the government is good business.

jeremynt.bsky.social•31 days ago

Honestly may be worth halting scientific progress if we can avoid creating another Marc Andreessen

da-zin-guy.bsky.social•32 days ago

he HELPED write it, in any case

daviddecolonizer.bsky.social•31 days ago

The Lost Boys need to be put in a major time out. Never should have let these Neverland Cosplayers steer the ship of state. Talk about the blind leading the blind!

mmasnick.bsky.social•32 days ago

He didn't get the code. Netscape was rewritten from scratch though there was a later legal dispute. But, yeah, still.

physisyst.bsky.social•31 days ago

Too few know or remember that.

I was in grad school and installed Mosaic on my DECStation 4000 and stopped using Gopher to access cernlib and other sites.

Big tech VC who despises most other people started with taxpayer funded work.

jonathankoren.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy•31 days ago

@sifu.tweety.fish the code was always open source. Federally funded software *should* be open source.

dumarchie.bsky.social•31 days ago

> Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, however, Mosaic was never released as open source software during its brief reign as a major browser; there were always constraints on permissible uses without payment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Mosaic

jonathankoren.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy•31 days ago

@dumarchie.bsky.social no one cares that commercial use required a payment.

https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic/blob/master/COPYRIGHT

dumarchie.bsky.social•31 days ago

Open source is about more than that. And where's the code for Microsoft/Apple operating systems?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software

jonathankoren.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy•31 days ago

@dumarchie.bsky.social if you really gave a shit, you wouldn’t be on Bluesky

mackuba.eu•31 days ago

A lot of people here care about open source (also, most of Bluesky is also open source)

booktweeting.bsky.social•32 days ago

“fuck you, I already got mine” is the only principle sincerely held by Fascists

sifu.tweety.fish•32 days ago

it's insane in particular for VCs because they get HUGE amounts of dealflow from NSF projects. My own startup had an initial grant from NSF that let us package our university work into something joe montana or the richest man in czechia can bet on. they're razing the seed corn warehouse for kicks

sifu.tweety.fish•32 days ago

just sheerly mindless destruction

darren.mckeeman.net•32 days ago

I know what you mean by NSF, but my brain automatically subs in "Ninja Strike Force" and my life is much better for it.

sifu.tweety.fish•32 days ago

I've dreamed of defeating the fake CDC and NSF but not like this

darkglade.bsky.social•32 days ago

Yup, cutting the ladder behind you is pretty much their MO.

jrfanboy.bsky.social•31 days ago

Also Capitalists, by which I mean the people who actually have the capital in a capitalist society

rst.bsky.social•32 days ago

FWIW, the concept wasn't entirely original -- it started as a reimplementation of the original CERN WWW client, though the NCSA group did add things (most notably ). Also worth noting that the Windows and Mac versions of Mosaic shared very little code with pmarca's Unix version.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply