I’ve been at Sun 14 years – almost precisely – and today had reason to go trawling through some old filestore, wherein I ran into this gem – the announcement of http://www.sun.com/

I mean, like, the real annoucement. The first time it went live and was announced to the public. On my 26th birthday, to be precise.

I remember the months previous, the Web-advocates like myself and Vasa Dasan jumping up and down on various people, demanding that we get a web presence to compete with “Silicon Surf”, the SGI website from 1993.

I might have a few acetate slides of screen captures from that era, but alas the pages are no longer online and I don’t think I saved the original GIFs, and www.archive.org only goes back to 1996.

Read the press-release below. Note the charming innocence. Phrases like “on-ramp to the Information Superhighway” and the interchangability of the term “Web” with the browser name “Mosaic”, because back then they were hardly distinct. There was only one graphical browser, and “Mosaic” was it.

In case you’re having trouble with the concept: This predates Netscape. Predates Mozilla. Predates Firefox. It certainly predates IE, but perhaps not by much in terms of technical functionality. 🙂

So…

SUN WELCOMES INTERNET USERS TO WINDOW SHOP
New User-Friendly Format Gives Internet
Users Information About Sun on Demand

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — April 22, 1994 — Sun Microsystems, Inc. today opened its own on-ramp to the Information Superhighway, unveiling its entire product line on the Internet in a multimedia, interactive format. Computer users can now access information about all Sun(R) products, services and related information simply by pointing and clicking the mouse button.

Sun’s latest database is part of the World Wide Web, a global connection of Internet servers throughout the world that link documents with “hypertext.” Using the Mosaic software application developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), users can simply point and click on a document and find related articles.

The world’s leading supplier of RISC-based, UNIX(R) workstations, servers, operating environment, networking and related technology, Sun has been closely involved with the Internet for years. According to statistics, more than 70 percent of the applications for the Internet were developed using Sun technology.

All Sun SPARCstation(TM) and SPARCserver(TM) systems are shipped complete with Solaris(R), which includes the Internet networking protocols already installed. Since 1992, Sun has sponsored SunSITE(TM) databases and last year introduced SunSolve(TM), which can ship upgrades and fixes in software bugs direct to customers via the Internet.

“Most of Sun customers have been on-line with Sun via Internet for several years,” said Anil Uberoi, Group Marketing Manager for Networking products at SMCC. “With our networking heritage, it’s almost as intuitive for us to use Internet as the telephone, to communicate with our customers, suppliers and partners.”

With this new capability, noted Uberoi, a much wider audience of Internet users will be able to find an even wider array of information about Sun.

Current Mosaic users can access information about Sun by using a search tool and typing in “Sun Microsystems,” or entering the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), “http://www.sun.com,” into their Mosaic viewer.

For more information on NCSA Mosaic, send electronic mail on the Internet to mosaic@ncsa.uiuc.edu, or write to the Software Development Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 605 East Springfield, Ave., Champaign, Illinois, 61280.

What is particularly interesting is to compare this to the internal missive from March 8th, 1994; I won’t share the whole thing with you, but suffice it to say that like the social tidal wave which swept Sun with the official creation of blogs.sun.com 10 years later, a mere 7 weeks prior to the launch of www.sun.com there were forces at work seeking to quench usage of the WWW within Sun, due (reasonably) to the potential impact of uncached network access upon the more fragile and narrow WAN network pipes which linked our offices.

The means of quenching is well-familiar to corporate drones like myself: crosscharging. If you arbitrarily bill for something without providing a clear solution for executing the billing, the resultant FUD can put a brake on almost any technology.

50 bucks a head is a pretty good handbrake.

What’s particularly ironic nowadays is to see the name of one of the signatories to this e-mail, the one whom briefly became my boss in the mid-90s.

Extract follows:

To: All Sun Employees Worldwide
Date: March 8, 1994
Subject: Mosaic Internal Use

A very powerful information and media network navigator and browser called “Mosaic” is beginning to be used around the world. This new software tool is now under commercial enhancement to enable Sun to use it more broadly within [THE INTRANET]. Because Mosaic is a retriever of information in many forms, it is possible to consume large quantities of network bandwidth – a commodity which is very important, is limited, and very expensive in some parts of our network.

[…]

if we should see large bandwidth consumption by Mosaic […] that would possibly lead to an impact on our ability to perform normal business processes, we may intermittently turn off Mosaic access without prior notice. We will be trying to minimize the frequency with which this will occur, but we hope you understand how important it is for us to be able to conduct Sun business in a manner which meets our customers’ and shareholders’ expectations.

Additionally, we will be periodically running a program which retrieves the banner of all Mosaic servers on [THE INTRANET] so that we can provide up to date information about new Mosaic features.

[THE IT ORGANISATION] will be charging individuals who use Mosaic $50 per month, as a minimum monthly usage charge, to their department. This internal fee is to cover the network load that this tool generates. Transaction usage charges may be implemented at a later date if the $50 charge per user per month is inadequate to cover network and disk space utilization.

Each Mosaic user by their use of Mosaic on [THE INTRANET] is agreeing to the following conditions:

1. Use of Mosaic and acceptance of the $50 per month minimum usage charge has been approved by his/her manager.

2. To minimize our exposure to viruses or worms, no compiles of source or running of executables (which also includes postscript) derived from Mosaic queries are to be performed on any machine on [THE INTRANET] until compiled and run on a Sun-managed machine not on [THE INTRANET].

3. Further to reduce the risk of viruses or worms, setting one’s self up as a Mosaic server is permitted if registered with your operating company’s [IT] executive; however, no untested executables, untested source, untested postscript, or unlicensed software or other material is to be made available on such Mosaic servers.

4. Mosaic users accept responsibility for the files they bring into [THE INTRANET] or subsequently make available to others through Mosaic. If a virus or worm or some other destructive force impacts [THE INTRANET] or any of its services, it will be considered gross misconduct on the part of the initiating Mosaic user. There have been a number of well publicized attacks on corporate networks in the past few weeks, and there is no reason to believe these will cease.

Eric Schmidt
Vice President
Chief Technology Officer
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Terry Keeley
Director
[IT Group …]

Back then I was going to, or had just made the transfer into the Network Security Group, and I seem to remember reviewing the security advice proffered; it made sense then, and is not too daft now.

Quite prescient, really, as was the whole enterprise.