[amsat-bb] ORI receives half million dollar grant, and it's only the first.

[Phil Karn]

On 9/11/20 03:43, Joseph Armbruster wrote:
>
> So Hank transferred the block of IPs to you, individually?  Was that
> the kind of thing where you were all working on a campus together and
> it was all word-of-mouth or was it a more formal act on paper?  In
> 2010 though, why did Brian need to ask Hank at all?  I mean at that
> point, they were your individual property.  I'm surprised whatever
> university you were attending did not try to stake a claim to them. 
> Was there any paper trail regarding the ownership / transfer between
> the original 1980 phone call request and ARDC's inheritance?

IP addresses were registered somewhat informally in the early days when
the Internet was a research project and address blocks were free, but
they were regularly published in various Internet documents like RFCs
(Requests for Comments). When the Internet grew up, more formal entities
like ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) and ICANN (Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), among others, were created
to register who owned what and to make those databases publicly
available. At various times, Hank, Brian and I were on all these lists
next to network 44, making us each at various times the legal owners.

I haven't been a student anywhere since I graduated from CMU with my
MSEE in 1979.

Since control had been passed informally between us over the years
according to whoever was then most willing to do the work, when IPv4
addresses began to get scarce we got concerned that someone might try to
grab them from us hams. So Brian proposed to create the nonprofit ARDC
to legally own network 44. Since Hank's name and mine had also been
associated with 44 at various times, Brian thought it important to make
sure all of us were OK with it. I for one never thought twice about it.
In fact, when it later dawned on us just *how* much this thing might
soon be worth, I was even more glad that we'd all agreed.

For many years Brian rejected inquiries to buy or even lease part of
network 44, but eventually we (the ARDC board) realized that, with IPv6
finally being deployed, IPv4 addresses wouldn't be in demand forever. So
we authorized him to seek a buyer of the upper 1/4 that had never been
used. I never quite let myself believe that Brian would pull it off. But
he did, and now we have a pretty good endowment to do neat things with
in ham radio, open source and STEM education.

What really ticks me off, and always will, is that Brian had the vision
and did all the hard work yet only lived long enough to see our first
two grants (TAPR student scholarships and the ARISS power supply
project).  Fate has a truly wicked sense of humor.

Phil